Only a couple of items today as the staff are, um, off to do some very important archaeological research. Yes, vey important.

Where's that 3-iron. . . . .

Yet another story on the Indonesian hobbits Indonesia's Lost World: Shaking Up the Family Tree

Key quote from this article:

The archaeological evidence strongly suggests that Homo floresiensis made sophisticated stone tools, including choppers, cutting blades, scrapers, and even spear points, some of which appear to have been hafted onto lengths of wood. These tools are very similar to those made by ordinary Stone Age humans (especially in Europe and North America), and yet the Flores hominid had a brain capacity similar--in terms of ratio to body size--to that of early humans like the Australopithecines and Homo habilis, who made only very rudimentary stone tools. The only other explanation for the presence of such sophisticated stone tools, which were found together with the skeletal material, is that they were produced by Stone Age Homo sapiens--but the earliest of the Flores tools date from 90,000 years ago and Homo sapiens is not currently thought to have arrived in Southeast Asia until 50,000 to 60,000 years ago.

New tell-all book! Roman remains ‘hidden’ for another five years – but new book reveals all

ROMAN artefacts unearthed in a dig in front of Carlisle Castle are unlikely to go on display in the city before 2009.

But a book detailing finds made during the three-year excavation has gone on sale at the Tullie House Museum.

That is where a permanent exhibition of clothes, coins and other items discovered will eventually be housed.

Several links from Nature on the Hobbit skeleton. Unknown how many of these are accessible without subscription, though the papers definitely are not.

Little lady of Flores forces rethink of human evolution

The find has excited researchers with its implications - if unexpected branches of humanity are still being found today, and lived so recently, then who knows what else might be out there? The species' diminutive stature indicates that humans are subject to the same evolutionary forces that made other mammals shrink to dwarf size when in genetic isolation and under ecological pressure, such as on an island with limited resources.

Flores, God and Cryptozoology

The discovery that Homo floresiensis survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as yetis are founded on grains of truth.

In the light of the Flores skeleton, a recent initiative4 to scour central Sumatra for 'orang pendek' can be viewed in a more serious light. This small, hairy, manlike creature has hitherto been known only from Malay folklore, a debatable strand of hair and a footprint. Now, cryptozoology, the study of such fabulous creatures, can come in from the cold.

The Flores find

For the archaeologists who unearthed and studied the Flores skeleton, the discovery is a potentially career-defining event. So how did they greet the find, and has it changed their ideas about human evolution? News@nature.com asked Peter Brown, who led the analysis, and Mike Morwood, who directed the dig, for their reflections.

A stranger from Flores

The conventional view of early human evolution is that the species Homo erectus was our first relative to spread out of Africa, some 2 million years ago. The spread that our cousin achieved is indicated by a 1.8-million-year-old, primitive form of H. erectus found at Dmanisi in Georgia, and by finds at slightly younger sites in China and the Indonesian island of Java. It was not thought that H. erectus travelled any farther towards Australia than this, because although early humans could have walked to Java from Southeast Asia at times of low sea level, the islands east of Java, always separated from it by deep water, seemed beyond their reach.

Actual papers here and here.

From the first one, the summary section describing the overall morphology and its apparent relationship to other hominins: When considered as a whole, the cranial and postcranial skeleton of LB1 combines a mosaic of primitive, unique and derived features not recorded for any other hominin. Although LB1 has the small endocranial volume and stature evident in early australopithecines, it does not have the great postcanine tooth size, deep and prognathic facial skeleton, and masticatory adaptations common to members of this genus2, 47. Instead, the facial and dental proportions, postcranial anatomy consistent with human-like obligate bipedalism48, and a masticatory apparatus most similar in relative size and function to modern humans48 all support assignment to the genus Homo—as does the inferred phylogenetic history, which includes endemic dwarfing of H. erectus. For these reasons, we argue that LB1 is best placed in this genus and have named it accordingly.

So it essentially presents a mixture of traits from the earlier australopithecines with craniofacial features more like later Homo, but with a brain volume at the lowest end of the earliest australopithecine range.

Archaeologist hopes 3,000-year-old wood is from ancient ship

An archaeologist's dog may have discovered the first ship ever found from the period of King David and his son, Solomon, who ruled the holy land 3, 000 ago.

The remains, which have been carbon-dated to the ninth century B.C., include a huge stone anchor believed to be the largest ever unearthed. The wreckage is lying under a few inches of sand off the Mediterranean coast in shallow waters, and has yet to be examined extensively.

If the remains are indeed 3,000 years old, it would be the first archaeological artifact ever found from the era of the first kings of Israel, with the possible exception of several huge stones at the base of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The discovery was made by a dog, according to marine archaeologist Kurt Raveh.

Scientists dig up family skeletons

It has been a mystery for more than a century - is a skull in an Austrian basement really that of arguably the greatest composer of all time, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?

Over the weekend a group of archaeologists began to answer the question by digging up the remains of Mozart's close relatives.

In a controversial operation, the scientists exhumed several skeletons from Mozart's family vault in Salzburg, where the composer spent most of his life.

On Monday they appear to have discovered the remains of the composer's 16-year-old niece Jeanette, whose bones could unlock the mystery of whether the skull, currently kept by Salzburg's Mozarteum Foundation, really is Mozart's.

Syrian archaeology report An abundant archeological excavations year in Syria

Syria is famous for its archeological sites that amount to 4,000. This number is increasing due to efforts by more than 120 archeological national and foreign teams working in Syria. Archeological excavations had unearthed important ruins that date back to old ages, a matter that confirms Syria's rich historical, human and civilization heritage.

Among the most important findings is the Nabatyiah Cemetery that was excavated south of Sweida, south of the country and includes four tombs separated by an internal foyer on the middle of which there is a main tomb higher than the others. It is believed to be the main burial place of one of the rulers or princes in that period.

In Sweida also, national teams unearthed a Nabatyian cemetery in Salkhad Citadel that dates back to before the first century A.D.

More Chinese tombs About 4,000-year-old tombs unearthed in Fujian

Archaeologists in eastern Fujian Province have unearthed 31 tombs dating back about 4,000 years from the bottom of a reservoir in Fuqing.

The 31 prehistoric tombs are scattered in an area of 800 squaremeters at the bottom of the Dongzhang Reservoir, which has dried up due to continual droughts.

Archaeologists with the provincial archaeological research institute have excavated the area during the past two months, unearthing 123 funeral objects from the tombs. The relics range from pottery to stone tools to jade ware. Each of these tombs is about two meters long and 0.5 to 0.6 meters wide.

Breaking news Scientists uncover possible new species of human

In a breathtaking discovery, scientists working on a remote Indonesian island say they have uncovered the bones of a human dwarf species marooned for eons while modern man rapidly colonized the rest of the planet.

One tiny specimen, an adult female measuring about 3 feet tall, is described as "the most extreme" figure to be included in the extended human family. Certainly, she is the shortest.

This hobbit-sized creature appears to have lived as recently as 18,000 years ago on the island of Flores, a kind of tropical Lost World populated by giant lizards and miniature elephants.

Well.

On the one hand, dwarfism is a common occurrence on islands for several species. On the other hand, this just sounds fishy to us.

Update: More here.

Macchu Picchu, Part Deux? Ancient city emerges from the clouds

The Peruvian government has presented ambitious plans to turn the stone fortress of Kuelap, a remote pre-Inca site in northern Peru, into one of the country's main tourism attractions.

Kuelap is located on a mountain top on the eastern ridge of the Andes, 3 000m above sea level and about 700km north of Lima.

The original inhabitants, the Sachapuyo or Chachapoyas, were known as the "people of the clouds" because their stone cities were built on a site where the cold Andean air meets the warm tropical air from the Amazon basin, resulting in a semi-permanent layer of mist and fog.

Cool amateur find I Found: 50,000 treasures unearthed by Britain's amateur archaeologists

When Peter and Christine Johnson decided on a whim to shut their fitness shop early one day last year to try their luck at treasure-hunting, their metal detectors had hardly been used.

Armed with a plastic bag for any swag, they expected to come back ruddy-cheeked and empty-handed after their first trek out into the fields of Kent.

Twenty minutes later, they had uncovered a precious hoard of 360 coins dating back to the Iron Age - two of them of a kind never previously found in Britain. The extraordinary collection has since been classified as an official treasure. The British Museum is also keen to acquire it.

Just don't make a profit at it.

Cool amateur find II Foil reveals Roman magic

The Norfolk gardener was quite irritated at finding bits of rubbish mixed with the expensive topsoil he had bought: he picked out what he took to be foil from a champagne bottle and unrolled it - to reveal a lost world of Roman magic.

Experts from the British Museum and Oxford University have been poring over the scrap of gold foil, no bigger than a postage stamp, which went on display for the first time yesterday, with other archaeological finds reported in the past year.

"It meant nothing to me at first, I wondered if it was a scrap of decoration from a garment or a piece of furniture," said Adrian Marsden, the finds officer in Norwich whose desk it first landed on. "Then I suddenly saw the Greek letter A, and I knew what we must have."

It is a lamella, a magical charm, one of five found in Britain, and of no more than a few dozen from anywhere in the Roman empire.

See, when we dig in the garden all we find is stuff the neighbor cat left for us.

And back in the US of A. . . Park dig yields picture of ancient camp

The lure of sleeping beneath the stars in Yellowstone apparently is nothing new.

Long before nylon tents and posh RVs, some of the park's earliest visitors arrived in the early summer on foot and camped on the shores of Yellowstone Lake.

While they were there, some 10,000 years ago, they made and repaired tools, hunted, prepared hides and may have rafted out to one or more of the lake's several islands.

When they left the beach, they left behind evidence of their stay. But over time those tools, flakes of stone and blood residue disappeared in the heaps of soil -- a buried story waiting to be told.

See? They find gold and magic foils; we find rocks and stones and sticks and bones.

We'll get right on that 7,000-year-old civilisation site needs attention

Mehrgarh necropolis is one of the archaeological sites discovered in Balochistan during the last five decades, where a city had been buried for centuries under tons of earth. It tells us about the oldest human settlements in the South Asian region.

The site, 140 kms southeast of the provincial capital, is located on the bank of the Bolan river near a settlement of Raisani tribe in the Bolan district. Archaeologists say it is one of the three oldest villages in the world, the other two being in Palestine and Iraq.

French experts, with the collaboration of Pakistani archaeologists, have conducted excavations at the site in various phases, revealing in the process the 7,000-year-old heritage of the Neolithic (new stone age) site. Among the relics discovered from Mehrgarh were skeletons buried along with necklaces of pearls and small items of earthenware.

Atlantis. . .found! And covered with a roof Work on roof for prehistoric site of Akrotiri begins again

Prime Minister (and Culture Minister) Costas Karamanlis had to intervene personally to end the funding shortfall that had bedeviled the makeover of the archaeological site of Akrotiri on Santorini (or Thera, to give the island its ancient name).

The Archaeological Society owed 4 million euros to the contracting company that had undertaken the replacement of the old roof with a new one, as well as a more general revamp of the major prehistoric site.

One of the largest pioneering works to take place at an archaeological site, work restarted this week when the money was provided to pay off the debt, following visits earlier this year by Deputy Culture Minister Petros Tatoulis, Alternate Culture Minister Fanni Palli-Petralia and General Secretary Christos Zachopoulos.

This is, of course, the actual place the Atlantic myth is based on. The eruption of Thera has also been (reasonably, in our view) postulated as the source of several of the plagues of Egypt from the Old Testament, though the dating of the various events is a little sketchy.

Experts Prepare Jiroft's 5,000-Year Map

Archeologists and surveyors plan to draw up an archeological map of the Iranian southern city of Jiroft, home to a 5,000 year old civilization.

Nicknamed as “The Lost Paradise” by experts, historical sites of Jiroft are located by the bank of Halil River, which covers 8450 sq km and houses artifacts dating from the Neolithic to Islamic period.

“The historical settlement of Halil River has relics from 7,000 years ago and is considered one of the earliest urban centers around the world. That’s why we have decided to produce its archeological map,” said Nader Alidad Suleimani, an expert with Iranian Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (CHTO) in Kerman. The historical site of Jiroft, located in Kerman, is one of the richest civilization sites of the world, encompassing invaluable remains and items from the third millennium B.C. and with more than 100 historical areas in just 400 kilometers of Halil Rood riverbank.

New cave paintings discovered

Another 26 cave paintings have been discovered in the Fingal Cave at Naeroey in Troendelag.

When the cave was discovered in 1961, 21 paintings were registered. The 47 paintings depict both people and animals.

-The cave paintings may be more than 3000 years old, archaeologist Melanie Wrigglesworth at the Science Museum says to NRK.

She believes the find may give us more knowledge of how human beings in the late Stone Age and in Older Bronze Age percieved the world around them.

The cave is both dark, wet and cold, and she believes that no one lived there, but that it was possibly used for some sort of religious practice, and that the paintings of animals and people were made in this connection.

That's the whole thing.

Remote sensing update Geophysics, GPS Technology Play Important Roles In Excavation Of Ancient Roman Fort

For centuries, trowels and handpicks have been traditional tools of the trade for archeologists, but a University at Buffalo geophysicist who has been working at an archeological site in Jordan is proposing that some decidedly 21st-century technologies, like tablet PCs equipped with fancy navigational software, ought to be standard gear as well.

"Non-invasive geophysical techniques, which allow researchers to image what's under the ground without digging, and real-time differential Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) technology, which provides resolution and accuracy to within a meter, can provide archeological teams with significant benefits," said Gregory S. Baker, Ph.D., associate professor of geology in UB's College of Arts and Sciences.

By helping archeological teams target with greater accuracy where an excavation will provide the greatest archeological "payoff," the integration of both of these techniques on a commonly available -- and portable -- platform like the tablet PC, could save them time and money, he added.

We don't know about centuries but for a long time anyway. This ought to assist in excavating less of any given site, since if you are able to see what the overall structure is like from the surface you can taylor your excavations to get just what you want instead of plowing up the whole thing just to find out where walls are.

Letters a 'time machine' to daily business of Egypt

They look like scraps of paper covered with lines of ornate faded script and mounted between sheets of glass. But to Matt Malczycki, they're a time machine offering glimpses into the commerce of medieval Egypt.

Malczycki, a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Utah, has been translating and analyzing the 777 documents and fragments of the Utah Papyri Collection, believed to be the largest collection of Arabic papyri in North America. And he has found that 1,000 years ago, Egyptian businessmen were sophisticated, polite and literate.

This seems like a great (if rather tedious) project. There are no doubt thousands of pages of papyrus sitting around in private (and public) collections that have yet to be translated. It also highlights the fact that the vast majority of surviving written records have to do with generally run-of-the-mill daily business transactions rather than flowery poetry or epic tales of kings and generals.

Truly mind-boggling Archaeologists discover witch burial in Crimea

An astonishing find will keep Russian archaeologists occupied for quite some time. Archaeological expedition from the Russian Ust-Alminsk region has made yet another sensational discovery.

In 2003, the same team of researchers unearthed an unlooted burial of a Sarmat girl in a lavish funeral gown; the burial also contained rings, earrings, necklaces and a variety of various golden medals, which had once been attached to clothes.

Artist's conception of what the witch may have looked like:


Various Viking items Viking Surprises

It's been the season for Vikings, with a replica of a warship originally crafted in Dublin setting sail in Denmark and some important discoveries in the British Isles.

Danish researchers at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde have spent four years replicating a 90-foot-long ocean-going warship based on the museum's Skuldelev 2 shipwreck.

. . .

Archaeologists at Ireland's National Museum have announced the "significant" and "exciting" discovery of a ninth-century Viking burial north of Dublin.

Biblical archaeology update The cave of Lot's seduction and the monastery it inspired

The ruins were first discovered during an archaeological survey at the south-east end of the Dead Sea in 1986, near a spring named Ain Abata. After further investigations it was evident that the site - near today's Ghor al-Safi, the biblical city of Zoara - was none other that the Sanctuary of Agios ("Saint") Lot. Biblical scholars and archaeologists have sought the site for decades.

Within a year of the discovery and identification of Deir Ain Abata ("Monastery of the Abbot's Spring") an international team of archaeologists was assembled to excavate and study the site. After more than 10 years of excavations and research, the final report is about to be published.

Story on Iraq not involving looting Field Museum 'reuniting' scattered collections from ancient Iraq site

With the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the museum recently began to study, catalog and reconcile the scattered but priceless collections of materials from the famous 5,000-year-old archaeological site of Kish, 50 miles south of Baghdad. Kish is one of the world's oldest cities and site of the earliest evidence of wheeled transport.

About time. Again, there are literally millions of items sitting in museum basements around the world that no one is seeing or studying. This is a good start at getting some of this material out to the public and the research community.

That's it for now. There's more, but we have pressing research concerns.

The continuing preservation saga Mexico Struggles to Preserve Ancient Ruins

The majestic pyramids and temples of the ancient Zapotec kingdom of Monte Alban sit spectacularly atop a hill in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca.

More than 1,000 years ago, Monte Alban was the bustling capital of a pre-Colombian realm, one of Mexico's oldest civilizations, and an early exponent of writing. It is one of Mexico's top archeological attractions, visited by people from the world over.

But, like many such sites in Mexico, it is underfunded for investigation, embroiled in land conflicts and being spoiled by the sheer number of visitors.

There's only two sentences there comparing Mexico with Peru, which is, unfortunately, what attracted our attention to this story in the first place. But still, Monta Alban is another one of those places most people don't know about, so look it up if you have some time to kill. Start here.

Indian Mounds Mystify Excavators

A thousand years ago along the banks of the Mississippi River, in what is currently southeast Illinois, there was a city that now mystifies both archeologists and anthropologists.

At its zenith, around A.D. 1050, the city that is now called Cahokia was among the largest metropolitan centers in the world. About 15,000 people lived in the city, with another 15,000 to 20,000 residing in its surrounding "suburbs" and outlying farmlands. It was the region's capital city, a place of art, grand religious rituals and science.

But by 1300, the city had become a ghost town, its carefully built structures abandoned and its population dispersed.

Actually quite a good article.

From mysterious mounds to mysterious ceramics Mysterious pottery shows true face of first Pacific settlers

Staring out from an ancient piece of pottery, the mysterious face of a bearded man has given scientists a unique glimpse of what the first settlers of Fiji may have looked like.

Researchers say the "extraordinary discovery" is a vital clue in mapping out how the South Pacific came to be inhabited some 3,000 years ago, suggesting the first direct link to islands some thousands of kilometres away.

Thought to be the work of the Lapita people - a long-lost race which originated near modern-day Taiwan then migrated to Polynesia - the fragment is also at least 200 years older than any other piece found in Fiji.

Way cool archaeological moment Thousands of tourists gather at Abu Simbel to watch sun greets face of Ramsis II

Thousands of tourists gathered at Abu Simbel Temple early Friday morning to watch the sun rays while falling perpendicularly on the face of King Ramsis II's statue inside the sanctuary hall to greet him on his birthday.

The fascinating scene was cheered by the crowd when the sun rays illuminated the face of the King for 20 minutes.

The statue of King Ramsis who was one of the most important pharaohs of Ancient Egypt is uniquely placed inside the temple so that the sun rays perpendicularly fall on his face twice a year, on his birthday and his coronation day.

That's the whole thing. Kind of Stonegengey.

Tehran ==> Finland ==> Boliva? Finnish find sheds new light on prehistoric Andean culture

Ceramic artifacts found by Finnish archeologists during a dig in Bolivia have shed new light on the prehistoric Tiwanaku people, of whom little is known, Helsinki University officials said.

"The discovery demonstrates that the Tiwanakus made the highest quality ceramics in the Andean region, with very naturalistic portraits, and thanks to this we now know what they looked like," Martti Paerssinen, a professor from Helsinki University who led the excavations, told AFP.

The Tiwanaku people settled on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca in the Andean mountains around 400 BC. They built their administrative centre, the city of Tiwanaku, around 300-500 AD, and their influence in the region continued to grow for several centuries.

Short blurb on more caucasian Chinese mummies China unearths ancient Caucasian tombs

Chinese archaeologists have started unearthing hundreds of tombs in an arid north-western region once home to a mysterious civilization that most likely was Caucasian, state media said Sunday.

The researchers have begun work at Xiaohe, near the Lop Nur desert in Xinjiang region, where an estimated 1000 tombs await excavation, according to Xinhua news agency.

Their findings could help shed light on one of the greatest current archaeological riddles and answer the question of how this isolated culture ended up thousands of kilometres from the nearest Caucasian community.

The tombs, thought by some to be 4000 years old, were first discovered in 1934 by a Swedish explorer, but virtually no work was done on them over the next more than six decades.

In 2003, a Chinese team started digging in the area, finding 33 tombs and nearly 1000 relics, but had to stop because of a severe storm, Xinhua said.

And finally, hot chicks!

We viewed a previously unknown documentary by the National Geographic Channel this weekend called "The Diva Mummy". It was about several exceptionally well-preserved mummies found in China, one from the 1970s and others more recently. They truly are fantastic. We can't find the NG story on it, but here is a (pretty good) blurb on it from China Daily:

The body of "Lady Dai," a noble woman from the Western Han Dynasty which ruled 2,100 years ago, is housed in the state-of-the -art Hunan Museum in Changsha, Central China's Hunan Province.

Flocks of visitors arrive every day to view the wonder. Just how did the ancient morticians embalm her - what materials did they use?

The body is so well preserved, it can be autopsied by pathologists and shows similar results from a cadaver of a recently deceased human being.

Also of particular interest was that the autopsy revealed she had advanced coronary artery disease, and probably died of myocardial infarction brought on by a dislodged gallstone. They were cagey about how they were preserved so well, but it appears all of these mummies were found covered in some 'mysterious' liquid. We speculate that it is probably something similar to the tannic acid that preserves bog mummies in northern Europe to similar degrees.

Also, we found the Mummy News site while researching this story. This site is an absolute hoot and has all sorts of neat stuff. It gives instructions on how to make a chicken mummy (actually four different ways!) and Making A Barbie® or Ken® Mummy.

You can also shop for mummy-related costumes just in time for Halloween! And frankly, given the usual big screen treatment mummies usually get, we wholeheartedly endorse at least one of their available costumes:

Ummmmm. . . . no. Luther's lavatory thrills experts

Archaeologists in Germany say they may have found a lavatory where Martin Luther launched the Reformation of the Christian church in the 16th Century.

The stone room is in a newly-unearthed annex to Luther's house in Wittenberg.

Luther is quoted as saying he was "in cloaca", or in the sewer, when he was inspired to argue that salvation is granted because of faith, not deeds.

The scholar suffered from constipation and spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet seat.

1) This is what the acronym 'TMI' was invented for.

2) There are far too many far too obvious jokes to make, so we shan't.

Breaking news Iceman's discoverer dead in Alps

Helmut Simon, the German who discovered an intact Bronze Age mummy in an Alps glacier, has been found dead in the Austrian Alps.

A hunter found his remains in a stream just as rescuers were planning to suspend their search eight days after he went missing while on a hike.

Well, that's sad. Kudos to Mr. Simon on his discovery and our sincerest condolences to his family and friends.

Rescue archaeology I Archaeologist faces challenges in Fourth Ward

The future of the Fourth Ward site where Houston Independent School District wants to build a two-school campus remains on hold while Fred McGhee determines what to do about the site's history.

"There has not been any really meaningful archaeology conducted in the area before," said McGhee, an African-American archaeologist and historical anthropologist. "My goal is to try to do that."

On a recent autumn morning, McGhee leaned on a fence surrounding the troubled piece of land in the historic neighborhood almost in the shadow of Houston's downtown skyline. A rooster crowing in a nearby backyard sounded like a voice from the past.

Rescue archaeology II Mining drives need for archaeologists

Two men are crouched over, stabbing orange and blue flags among the hillside sagebrush while two others scan the hilltop.

"Found a scrape," one yells, referring to a tiny rock tool that likely was used to scrape animal hides clean hundreds of years ago - not significant enough to place in the National Museum of American History, but one of the big finds of the day.

This hillside near Gillette is littered with rusted cans, scrap wood and bits of porcelain left over from a homestead that must have been here a century ago. Each remnant is examined, recorded and left where it was found. After these pages of history are filed in government books, this hillside and all its homestead relics can be dozed over to make way for a drilling rig or coal shovel.

. . .

Archaeologists like Wilson are in high demand all over Wyoming, a demand driven by the burgeoning natural gas industry, most of which is centered on federally owned minerals.

That would no doubt be scraper.

What this is all leading to is a comprehensive database of known sites, from either archaeological work or historical records. Work has begun on a similar system in Egypt. It's all part of a push to better manage archaeological remains as a resource.

Aerial Archaeology in Jordan

Aerial photography grew at a rapid pace in tandem with the development of the aeroplane, and in the Middle East there were significant contributions from a number of countries. In the 1914-18 war the Germans created a Denkmalschutzcommado – a small unit of photographers and archaeologists whose job it was to record and protect archaeological sites from damage by military activities.

In the 1930s, the French Jesuit priest, Père Antoine Poidebard, astonished and delighted the academic world with the publication of his La trace de Rome dans le désert de Syrie (Paris, 1934). In the volume of plates, the reader could leaf through page after page of stunning views of lonely Roman forts, roads and frontier towns, all taken from early biplanes. At a stroke, Poidebard had mapped the frontier of Roman Syria – or at least a palimpsest of successive frontiers. In 1945 he published the results of his wider look at Syria from the air (Le Limes de Chalcis, with R. Mouterde) and in the meantime he had stimulated the interest of the great British orientalist and explorer, Sir Aurel Stein, to do his own survey of Iraq and Transjordan in 1938-39 with the aid of the RAF (finally published in 1985 as Sir Aurel Stein’s Limes Report, eds S. Gregory and D. Kennedy). But then aerial archaeology across the entire region grounded to a halt after 1945.

Really, they're just as fascinating as gold death masks. . . New light on the cart ruts as a scientific study is launched

Some new light will be shed on the mysterious cart ruts found all over Malta as a scientific research will be carried out to try and establish why, when and how where these enigmatic routes cut into rocks were used.

Heritage Malta will be the Project Leader in the Culture 2000 project entitled "The significance of cart-ruts in ancient landscapes". This is the first time that Malta is a project leader in such a project. During the launch of the project it was announced that there are two international partners involved: Faculty of Environmental Sciences University of Urbino Italy, and APROTECO -- association for economic development of Valley of Lecrin, Granada Spain. Local partners include: National Museum of Archaeology, Restoration Unit, MEPA and the University of Malta.

More here.

Black Sea archaeology update Ocean archaeologists hunt Noah's flood under Black Sea

Four years ago, scientists thought they had found the perfect place to settle the Noah flood debate: A farmer's house on a bluff overlooking the Black Sea built about 7,500 years ago — just before tidal waves inundated the homestead, submerged miles of coastline and turned the freshwater lake into a salty sea.
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Some believed the rectangular site of stones and wood could help solve the age-old question of whether the Black Sea's flooding was the event recounted in the biblical story of Noah.

That story told of a calamitous flood occurring over 40 days and nights. Scientists had largely dismissed it, believing the Black Sea filled up gradually with gently rising waters. That wisdom was rocked when two scholars claimed several years ago that the Black Sea's flooding was more recent — and so rapid and widespread that it forced people to move as far away as mainland Europe.

Probably posted the essence of this story earlier, but here it is anyway.

Hebrew University Archaeologists Reveal Additional Sections Of Ancient Synagogue In Albania

Excavations carried out this fall at an ancient synagogue in Albania have uncovered additional sections of the impressive structure. The excavations, now in their second season, are being conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Albanian Academy of Sciences.

The synagogue, which dates from the 5th or 6th century C.E., is located in the city of Saranda, a coastal city in Albania, opposite the Greek island of Corfu. The synagogue underwent various periods of use, including its conversion into a church at its last stage, prior to being abandoned.

Initial excavations at the site were conducted some 20 years ago when Albania was under tight Communist rule. At that time that the building was identified as a church.

Mostly it's just avoiding diarrhea 'Indiana Jones'-style archaeology goes interactive; riddles all around

If you have ever seen any of the Indiana Jones movies, you surely know that archaeology is not only dangerous, but also exciting, enthralling, and generally exhilarating.

That's not quite the case with the practice of real archaeology, but at 5W!ts Boston's new "Tomb" attraction, anyone can be Indy for a day, or at least for 40 minutes.

We jest, but this looks to be really fun.

Rescue archaeology III Archaeologist keeps eye on past, future

For about 4,000 years, bones and other remains from an ancient Indian tribe have rested under the dirt on a peaceful hill in what is now called Hermitage.

With development's bulldozers at the gate of this northeast Davidson County plot, Dan Allen's job is to clear the way, while trying to honor the dignity of the departed souls and learn about the way they lived.

Allen is a commercial archaeologist who estimates that he has removed 1,000 graves in 12 years of work. They've included old graves of fallen Civil War soldiers and Native Americans, like the 80 to 100 graves that rest on this 1-acre site being developed with townhomes near the Hermitage Golf Course. His is a necessary vocation in a culture constantly moving dirt for the next shopping center or cul-de-sac.

Egads. . . . Prosecutors describe murder-for-hire plot

Over a morning cup of coffee, Jack Harelson examined the Polaroid of his old enemy lying in a shallow grave. He laughed and laughed.

"One down, three to go," Harelson said, tossing the photo into the fire.

But the alleged conversation between Harelson and the police informant who arranged the staged murder of Lloyd Olds was never caught on tape, prosecutors admitted Wednesday. They presented opening arguments for Harelson’s attempted murder trial in Jackson County Circuit Court.

. . .

Convicted in 1996 of stealing ancient artifacts from government property, Harelson wanted to "take out" the four people who brought him down, said Clay Johnson, Josephine County district attorney.

Yeesh. See also Cave Looter Solicits Murder at Archaeology Magazine's site.

Interesting site we'd not seen before The Wasteflake Project

The Wasteflake Project is intended as a place to commit public scientific collaboration, to consider scientific and philosophical concerns from many perspectives, professional and non-professional, insider and outsider. It combines the intimacy and informality of a conference symposium with the public availability of the Internet, linking scholars around the world in discussion, both structured and free-form, of issues of interest.

Courtesy of Kris Hirst at Archaeology.About.com. Check it out. We've only briefly visited it at this point, but it looks like a promising way to create a dialog on archaeology in the public sphere. We'll investigate further and report back.

Unless Kris is out there and wishes to comment on it. Hint Hint.

Burial Site Found Near Ancient Olympia

Archeologists have discovered ancient graves near Ancient Olympia, the hallowed site where the Olympic games were born in 776 B.C., the Culture Ministry said Thursday.

The 25 limestone graves date back to the Neolithic era — roughly 4000 B.C. to 2000 B.C — and were found during construction work about 200 miles southwest of Athens.

The ministry said each grave was used to bury at least three to five people but as many as 10 in one case. Also found inside the graves were amphorae — or two-handled ceramic jars used for shipping and storing oil and wine — and jewelry that were buried along with the dead.

"Bones have been preserved in excellent condition, along with grave offerings ... that will yield significant information about the society of this prehistoric settlement," a ministry statement said.

That's the whole thing.

Yes, most are previously unknown Previously Unknown Sites in Jewell County Excavated by Kansas State Professor

Archaeological sites previously unknown to professional archaeologists have been discovered in Jewell County, Kan., by a Kansas State University professor. He said a local collector alerted him to the sites.

Brad Logan, research associate professor of anthropology, spent three weeks in September doing test excavations onn White Rock Creek's Lovewell Reservoir, an archaeological site that is usually underwater.

"When the reservoir is at its normal flood pool, these sites are all underwater," Logan said. "It's only when the water is released in late summer for irrigation that these sites are exposed."

More on Bulgarian gold Bulgaria dig suggests rich past

Archaeologists in Bulgaria say they have found hundreds of tiny gold jewels dating back 5,000 years, possible proof of Europe's earliest civilisation.

The head of Bulgaria's National Museum of History, Bozhidar Dimitrov, said the team had unearthed gold rings, beads and jewellery inlaid with tiny pearls.

He said the jewels had shown expert craftsmanship and an unexpectedly high level of technology for the time.

And now for the promised EEF weekly news:

Following news courtesy of the EEF.

Press article about the supposed interrelations between Ancient Egyptian and Hebrew texts:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/713/he1.htm

Really nice article, even if it's more text than artifacts.

Press article about the ancient Jewish colony at Elephantine:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/713/he2.htm

Both good articles by Jill Kamill. Read the whole things.

(University or other subscription access only, but good if you have them)
The Restoration Stela of Tutankhamun (CG 34183)
-- Photographs
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/MUS/PA/EGYPT/BEES/IMAGES/BEES_KARNAK.html
-- English translation by John Bennett, The Restoration Inscription of Tut'ankhamun, JEA, vol. 25, pp. 8-15 (1939), [translation, pp. 9-11]:
URL: http://www.geocities.com/debunkinglc/Stela.html
-- English translation by Benedict G. Davies, Egyptian Historical Records of the Later Eighteenth Dynasty, Fascicle VI, Translated from W. Helck, Urkunden der 18. Dynastie, Heft 22, Warminster, 1995 (partial)
URL: http://www.angelfire.com/ne2/TiaDuat/tutstela.html

Online version of: Didier Gentet, Jérôme Maucourant, Some Reflections on Price Formation and Price Fluctuation in the Case Egypt at the End of the Second Millenium B.C., paper first presented at the fourth International Karl Polanyi Conference in Montreal, November 1992 - 11 pp., pdf-file: 33 KB
URL: http://thorstein.veblen.free.fr/documents/JM9201.pdf

Online version of: Mahmoud Ezzamel, Work Organization in the Middle Kingdom, Ancient Egypt, in: Organization, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 497-537 (2004) "This paper examines original documents from the Middle Kingdom in ancient Egypt (2050-1780 BC), containing material on various practices relating to the organization of work and labour discipline in state projects." -
pdf-file: 408 KB
URL: http://org.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/11/4/497.pdf

[Submitted by Peter Brand (menmaatre@hotmail.com)]
"I am pleased to announce that the Karnak Hypostyle Hall Project of the University of Memphis now has its own website. Please visit us at: http://cas.memphis.edu/~hypostyle/
Our team will be leaving for Egypt on October 20th, 2004, for a 3 month season. The website will continue to grow as we add season reports and other information. Please add us to your links pages where appropriate."

And the news just keeps trickling in. . . .


"I love gooooooold!"

Bulgarian Archaeologists Unearth 5,000 Year-old Gold Treasure

Archaeologists in Central Bulgaria have retrieved a 5,000 year-old golden treasure consisting of more than 400 fine-crafted jewels, National Museum of History chief Bozhidar Dimitrov said Thursday.

An expedition unearthed the treasure in a valley tucked between the Balkan and Sredna Gora Mountain, Dimtrov said. The exact location of the find was being kept secret for security reasons, he said.

Oh, tell us. We won't tell anyone else. Honest.

SAPARMURAT NIYAZOV MEETS GREAT GRANDCHILD OF AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGIST RAFAEL PAMPELLI

An international scientific conference, “Turkmenistan – a homeland of the Annau culture and Ak Bugdai”, will start in Ashgabat on October 22. As the Ashgabat correspondent of Turkmenistan.ru reports, the conference is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of discoveries made by an expedition headed by American professor-archaeologist Rafael Pampelli at an excavation site near the village of Annau, a few kilometers to the west from Ashgabat. It should be recalled that scientists discovered traces of highly advanced civilization and the remaining of white wheat grains cultivated by ancient grain growers 5,000 years ago.

Public talk I Archaeologist to speak on discoveries (Quickie anonymous reg required)

Archaeologist Bonnie Gums from the University of South Alabama will present a talk titled "Prehistoric Peoples at Orange Beach" at 6 p.m. today at the Orange Beach Senior Activity Center.

Gums will discuss archaeological discoveries, such as two large pits filled with shells and fish bones left by prehistoric peoples of the Weeden Island culture, who lived along the waterways of Orange Beach between A.D. 700 to A.D. 900. She will also bring artifacts for show and discussion.

The presentation is co-sponsored by the USA Center for Archaeological Studies and the Orange Beach Public Library. This is a free event.

The senior center is at 26251 Canal Road (Alabama 180). For more information, contact Angela Rand at the library, 981-2923 or Bonnie Gums at 460-6562.

That's the whole thing. Note that we are not encouraging anyone to call the number listed above.

Public talk I Biblical Archaeology Conference at UNO

Author and archaeologist James Strange will be the keynote speaker at the sixth annual Batchelder Biblical Archaeology Conference in Omaha.

The conference will be held Oct. 28 through 30 at the W.H. Thompson Alumni Center on the University of Nebraska at Omaha campus.

Strange, a professor at the University of South Florida, will speak at 7 p.m. Oct. 28 on "Jesus and His Archaeological Setting." It is free and open to the public.

Home at last! Prestwich skeletons find a home at last

Hundreds of human skeletons unearthed from Prestwich Street in Cape Town are likely to be reinterred at a memorial park to be established on the corner of Somerset Road and Buitengracht Street.

The South African Heritage Resources Agency (Sahra) said in a statement on Wednesday that the site had been identified after a meeting of "interested parties".

Phakamani Buthelezi, formerly head of marine and coastal management and now the new head of Sahra, said in the statement: "Our ancestors will be afforded the dignity they deserve."

So far about 1 000 skeletons have been unearthed from the excavations at Prestwich Street.

We think this was a good resolution to the whole thing.

Don't know if we've posted this book review by Mark Rose over at Archaeology magazine on Joann Fletcher's The Search for Nefertiti: The True Story of an Amazing Discovery, but here it is: Where's Nefertiti?

Last year, the public was hit by a media barrage touting an amazing Egyptological find: a long-neglected mummy was none other than the famous queen Nefertiti. The identification was promoted in the Discovery Channel's two-hour documentary "Nefertiti Resurrected." According to a Washington Post article, 5.5 million viewers tuned in to the documentary when it aired August 17, 2003, putting it in the top ten programs ever for the cable channel.

Due out in October, The Search for Nefertiti: The True Story of an Amazing Discovery (William Morrow & Co., $25.95) is the American edition of a companion book to the documentary. Here's how the publisher sums it up: "After years of intense research, Dr. Joann Fletcher has answered the questions countless researchers before her could not. While studying Egyptian royal wigs, she read a brief mention of an unidentified and mummified body, discovered long ago and believed to belong to an Egyptian of little importance...to the astonishment of her colleagues she identified this body as the missing remains of Queen Nefertiti."

Covers the controversy and the issues surrounding it very well. It's a very familiar storyline to those who have followed Egyptology for a while: author makes startling claim about Egyptian history, professional Egyptologists decry it as unsound, etc., books fly, and after a few years everybody forgets about it. Somewhat similar to the flap some years ago about the supposed great age of the sphinx.

Also check out The Archaeology of Hidden Cave, Nevada. Pretty famous site for those studying the western U.S.

Both links via About.Com.

Kind of a slow news day so far. We're expecting the weekly EEF news so there might be more to read later on today.

SCA resumes excavations at mummies valley in Bahreya Oases

Minister of Culture Farouq Hosni gave the green light to the Egyptian mission to resume excavation works in an area known as the valley of mummies in the Bahreya Oases in Giza governorate.

Dr. Zahi Hawas, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said in statements on Wednesday that the Egyptian mission would not use foreign help during unearthing operations which were suspended three years ago.

Hawas added that the work of the mission in the past five years was carried out with pure Egyptian expertise.

The SCA Chief said that he would lead the mission, which will star its job early next month to unravel the secrets of this valley.

The excavation is expected to result in finding a number of mummies of Pharaonic Egypt to be added to the 249 ones discovered in the past which date back to the 26th dynasty.

That's the whole thing. Sadly, you can't just leave them sit out there because the place would be looted within a month.

Update on Wal-Mart Vs. Teotihuacan Wal-Mart charged over Mexico site

A Mexican leftist leader filed criminal charges against Wal-Mart and local and federal officials over construction of a huge discount store in the shadow of ancient pyramids outside Mexico City.

Gerardo Fernandez, a national director of one of Mexico's biggest opposition parties -- the Party of the Democratic Revolution -- filed charges Tuesday with the federal Attorney General's office to block the Wal-Mart owned store at the Teotihuacan archeological ruins.

Wal-Mart damaged archeological relics during construction, a crime subject to imprisonment, Fernandez said in his complaint, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters. The company had no immediate comment.

Two new items just in off the wire

Archaeologist to examine Old City Cemetery next week

Archaeologist John Keller said it could take up to six weeks to fully examine Brownsville’s Old Cemetery dating back to at least 1848.

Keller’s work starts next week following Commissioners Court approval Tuesday of an agreement with him.

The court capped the fees for his services at $50,000, but should there be any need for subcontractors, the county will pay their actual cost plus 10 percent.

MSU archaeologist part of major Cuba initiative

Mississippi State University archaeologist John O'Hear has spent his entire career exploring early Native American life in the Southeast. But because he grew up in Argentina and speaks fluent Spanish, he recently also has become a co-investigator of a project seeking to unravel archaeological secrets at one of the most important sites in southern Cuba.

The early 16th century site is so significant O'Hear describes it as the equivalent of "1,000 years from now being able to dig at the site of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King's home church in Atlanta."

What did Tacitus know and when did he know it???? Forest excuse 'pure Roman spin'

WHEN the all-conquering armies of ancient Rome failed to subdue the northern end of Britain, there had to be a good reason.

So the Romans decided it was not the primitive barbarians known as the Caledonii who had defeated them, but the vast impenetrable forest covering the country now known as Scotland.

However, a new book to be released next month on the history of Scotland’s woods claims this idea was invented by Roman writers to preserve the image of the empire’s "invincible" legions.

According to Professor Chris Smout, the Historiographer Royal, it was an early example of political spin used to explain failure, and a tactic used by the Romans to cope with defeat against the German tribes.

Media bias! Partisan politics! The Imperial branch of government cozying up to the military industrial complex! And someone had better look into the web of connections Professor Smout has with Germanic warlords.

Viking village update Full Excavation for Irish Viking Village?

Preliminary work to build a bypass road in an Irish village has yielded what could be the most significant piece of Viking history in Europe: a virtually intact town that some have already called Ireland's equivalent of Pompeii.

Evidence for the ancient settlement was discovered last year by archaeologists testing areas ahead of road builders.

Located near the banks of the river Suir at Woodstown, five miles from the city of Waterford, the potential Viking town lies below pasture fields commonly used for horse grazing.

Important archaeological discoveries in eastern desert unearthed

An excavtation mission under Minnesota University in the US which is conducting excacavations in Wadi Qum Heleeg in Sharkeya desert unearthed 132 engravings dating back to pre-historic ages.

Dr. Zahi Hawas, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities said yesterday that the mission found out drawings of cattle and cows as well as pictures of a flock tied to persons, noting that the there was breeding up of livestock in pre-historic eras in this area.

That's the whole thing. Darn short on specifics. Could be Predynastic, Neolithic, Epipaleolithic, who knows.

What a guy Pueblo artifacts unearthed

In the mid-1990s, looters offered Richard Chaves, who just purchased a plot of land in central New Mexico, several hundred thousand dollars for whatever artifacts they could find buried on his ranch.

In January 1996, instead of accepting the offer, Chaves approached Michael Adler at the SMU Department of Anthropology for advice. Chaves carried with him a shoebox full of artifacts he gathered from the surface of the land, and he sensed the potential archaeological value of what might still remain unearthed.

Chaves turned out to be right. The artifacts in the shoebox captured Adler’s interest and the two men began planning how to excavate the ranch. From that afternoon meeting has emerged the identification of the Chaves/Hummingbird site in New Mexico, an annual summer project for students and faculty of the anthropology department since 1998.

Great story. This happens every so often and it's a blessing: a private landowner gives permission for archaeologists to investigate on their land. Often these turn into long-term projects providing graduate students with numerous dissertation and thesis topics.

Now, this is interesting Kiln's 'ancestor' found in Greece
Clay hearth Antiquity

Archaeologists have discovered the oldest clay "fireplaces" made by humans at a dig in southern Greece.

The hearths are between 34,000 and 23,000 years old and were almost certainly used for cooking by prehistoric inhabitants of the area.

Researchers found remnants of wood ash and phytoliths - a type of plant cell - in these hearths and lab tests show the clay was burnt.

The study appears in the latest edition of the scholarly journal Antiquity.

Brief post:

Underwater archaeology update Lake Constance is historical ships' graveyard

Archaeologists believe Lake Constance is a huge ships' graveyard for historical vessels dating back to ancient times.

Martin Mainberger of the regional office for the preservation of historical monuments said Tuesday 50 shipwrecks have already been identified in Lake Ueberling, a northern arm of Lake Constance.

Underwater archaeologists from Europe and the United States are currently meeting at Constance in southern Germany as part of an international conference on underwater archaeology in Zurich.

NORTH-EAST DIG THROWS LIGHT ON EARLY SETTLERS

Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of the first early settlers in Aberdeenshire during an 11-day excavation near Kintore.

A Mesolithic, or Middle Stone-Age site, dating back around 8,000 years, was unearthed on the outskirts of the village.

Kintore has already revealed historically valuable finds, including Roman bread ovens, a timber circle thought to date back 6,000 years, and evidence of a roundhouse.

Experts now hope their latest discovery will help them piece together a history of the area - something which, at the moment, does not exist.

Slave cemetery is unearthed on old plantation

Thanks to a handful of determined local historians, archaeologists have found a slave cemetery on a Virginia Tech farm in Blacksburg.
The spot once was considered sacred -- the final resting place for men, women and children who toiled and died at Kentland, southwest Virginia's largest antebellum plantation.

The discovery marks the beginning of a long-term project to restore the plantation's historic sites.

Carlisle hailed ‘one of top Roman dig sites’

CARLISLE has been hailed as one of the top Roman sites in Europe by a leading archaeological expert.

Around 80,000 objects were discovered during the Millennium project excavation on Castle Green and the team leader in charge of the dig has ranked the city in the top three in the UK for Roman finds.

John Zant, of Oxford Archaeology North, who ran the Millennium Project in Carlisle in 1998 to 2001, was in the city over the weekend for a conference on the results of the dig.

Medieval Houses of God, or Ancient Fortresses?

Investigations in Lalibela, Ethiopia, are revealing that Africa's most important historical Christian site is much older than previously thought. Up until now, scholars have regarded the spectacular complex of 11 rock-cut churches as dating from around A.D. 1200, but new survey work carried out by a British archaeologist suggests that three of the churches may have originally been "built" half a millennium earlier as fortifications or other structures in the waning days of the Axumite Empire.

This one didn't get away Fisherman nets statue of ancient Greek athlete

A Greek fisherman has made the catch of the day -- or maybe the century.
He snagged a 24-hundred-year-old bronze statue a few days ago, near the Aegean Sea island of Kythnos

The Greek Culture Ministry says it's missing a head, an arm and a leg, but it's still quite a find. Experts think the statue is of a young athlete -- given the fact that it is naked, its stance indicates movement, and that there's a great deal of anatomical detail.

It is about four-feet-eight-inches tall and weighs nearly 155 pounds.

The fisherman handed the statue over the the port authority on October 15th, then it was taken to Athens under police guard.

That's the whole thing.

Hebrew University archaeologists reveal additional sections of ancient synagogue in Albania

Excavations carried out this fall at an ancient synagogue in Albania have uncovered additional sections of the impressive structure. The excavations, now in their second season, are being conducted under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Albanian Academy of Sciences.

The synagogue, which dates from the 5th or 6th century C.E., is located in the city of Saranda, a coastal city in Albania, opposite the Greek island of Corfu. The synagogue underwent various periods of use, including its conversion into a church at its last stage, prior to being abandoned.

Media review corner



[Update] Yeah? yeah? Way cool dancing skeleton, ya?

Finally, we take this opportunity to encourage readers to view the latest Discovery Channel mummy offering Mummy Detective: The Crypt of the Medici. It was first broadcast Sunday evening (Oct. 9) in the US and wasn't too bad, in our estimation. Our first impression is that it could have easily been extended into two hours since in its one-hour format a lot of history and information relating to pathology could have been included. As it is, the program was interesting, not too overhyped, and generally rather informative. Brier makes a good host, as he really tries to make it appear that the viewer is in the room with him while he explains things. Those with some familiarity with the subject can be irritated by this, but that's a small complaint.

We also thought that the issue of even disinterring and studying the remains was handled with some sensitivity, particularly the eventual disposition of the remains -- they were removed from their original container (mud-soaked cruddy boxes or ossuaries) and given nice shiny new steel coffins.

Check out the "News From the Crypt" links in the link above to review the entire storyline.

Rio Grande artifacts may yield new clues

Archaeologists have discovered a cache of artifacts near South Padre Island they say could be up to 5,000 years old, potentially providing new clues about early peoples of the Texas coast.

The items, found in a protective clay dune about 6 feet underground, appear to be part of a fishing camp for a nomadic group of hunter-gatherers, archaeologist Robert Ricklis said. They include fragments of shell tools, chipped flint projectile points, and a fish earbone, or otolith, that can be analyzed for information about the bay environment of the time.

Ricklis said the find was significant because so little is known about the ancient Rio Grande Valley. Most early manmade items would have been eroded by sand and sea air, or washed out by the ever-changing course of the waterways of the Rio Grande basin near the Mexican border.

Don't we all Archaeologists crave important finds at Zhou Dynasty burial site

Chinese archaeologists hope to discover additional important relics from recently uncovered Western Zhou (1046-771 BC) cemetery to confirm existing findings and reveal new clues about the ancient dynasty.

The excavation on No 32 and No 18 tombs of the cemetery that was discovered earlier this year was approved by the State Cultural Relics Administration. Official digging at the tombs started on Sunday.

"It is the first time to open Western Zhou tombs that feature four tunnels showing they once belonged to high-ranking officials in that ancient dynasty and, their hosts may be the kings of the Western Zhou," said Zhang Tinghao, director of the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Administration.

Following news courtesy of the EEF.

Oh, sure

Egyptian mummy odour for sale "to help give displays a more authentic touch":
http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=553&fArticleId=2261949

Trust us. Mummies stink.

Dr Hawass about the supposed "hidden chamber" in the Kheops pyramid:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/712/hr2.htm

The "annual occasion of the perpendicular sun fall on the face of
Ramses II's statue in the Temple of Abu Simbel" will get a special
celebration and a CD:
http://www.sis.gov.eg/online/html11/o171024h.htm

Dr Hawass about the supposed "hidden chamber" in the Kheops pyramid:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/712/hr2.htm
[Ed. You know, before we die we'd like to be able to say this: " On my first night in Paris I was fortunate to be dining with Omar Sharif."]

The "annual occasion of the perpendicular sun fall on the face of Ramses II's statue in the Temple of Abu Simbel" will get a special celebration and a CD:
http://www.sis.gov.eg/online/html11/o171024h.htm

"The Stela of Era of 400 Years" (JE 60539)
-- Drawing of the stela in: Revue archéologique, Nouvelle série, vol. XI (1865), pl. IV [between pp. 168 and 169] - this vol. also contains an early French translation by Auguste Mariette, La stèle de l'an 400, pp. 169-190
URL: http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-203580
-- Hieroglyphic text and French translation
URL: http://sethy1.free.fr/An400.html
-- English translation in: James Henry Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, vol. III, Chicago, 1906, sections 538-542
URL: http://snipurl.com/9tml
-- English translation by James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, Princeton, 1969, pp. 252-253
URL: http://nefertiti.iwebland.com/rameside_inscription.htm

Online version of: E.H. Cline, D. Harris-Cline( eds.), The Aegean and the Orient in the Second Millennium, Proceedings of the 50th Anniversary Symposium, University of Cincinnati, 18-20 April 1997, in: Aegaeum, vol. 18 (1998) - the articles can be downloaded as pdf-files.
TOC: http://www.ulg.ac.be/archgrec/aegaeum18pdf.html

Online version of: Lana Troy, Resource management and ideological manifestation. The towns and cities of ancient Egypt, in: The Development of Urbanism from a Global Perspective ("Urban Origins in Eastern Africa" final conference in Mombasa, 1993)
"Today's scholars ... present a vision of Egypt as a complex society incorporating a great diversity of communities, combining both rural and urban elements. An increasing focus on settlement archaeology has fuelled an interest in the social structure as well as the material remains of ancient Egyptian communities." - 58 pp., pdf-file: 168 KB
URL: http://www.arkeologi.uu.se/afr/projects/BOOK/Troy/troy.htm

Just wait 6,000 years, he'll turn up Finder of Tyrol "Iceman" missing in Alps

The man who 13 years ago found the frozen remains of a prehistoric iceman in an Alpine glacier has disappeared in the snow-covered Alps with little hope of being found.

A member of the mountain rescue team at Bad Hofgastein in Austria told Reuters on Monday that Helmut Simon, the German man who found the 5,300-year-old mummified body while hiking on the border of Austria and Italy in 1991 has been missing for three days.

"There's a lot of snow up there," the rescuer, who did not want to be named, said about the 2,467-metre (8,000-ft) Garmskarkogel mountain in the Salzburg region, where Simon vanished. "We've looked everywhere. He was hiking alone."

Good article Archaeologist continues to dig up history

In the past 30 years archaeologists worldwide have visited the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County. The general public can now see what's involved in the archaeological dig that has proved the existence of early humans dating back 16,000 years.

"The site was opened last year for the first time to the public," said David Scofield, director of Meadowcroft Museum of Rural Life. "We are now in the process of getting an architect to create a design for a permanent roof over the excavation. This will permanently protect the site and be more public-friendly."

Archaeologist James M. Adovasio and his crew began excavating the rockshelter located 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh in 1973. After uncovering 20,000 human artifacts and nearly 2 million animal and plant remains, Adovasio was able to disprove through the use of radiocarbon testing the widely held belief that the first humans on the North American continent crossed over from Asia at the Bering Strait and settled near Clovis, N.M., about 12,000 B.C.

It doesn't have nearly the caché of other sites ("See the rockshelter along the Cross Creek". . .nah) but its relative anonymity belies its importance. This was probably the site with the best, earliest claim for pre-Clovis habitation, but was never really recognized as such until Monte Verde came along. Most of the problems with the site (generally involving dating) were not particularly convincing in our view, and it should have been recognized long ago. Kudos to Adovasio for keeping at it.

Greek sarcophagus update Sarcophagus from 900 BC oldest yet found in Greece

Guy Sanders of the American School of Classical Studies discovered the oldest and heaviest sarcophagus ever found in Greece in Ancient Corinth. The 1.88x1.23x0.85-meter find weighs 2.3 metric tons and dates from 900 BC. It is made of stone and its discovery reveals that the ancient Corinthians were able to shift large stone masses 200 years earlier than hitherto known. The lid alone weighs 1.2 metric tons, The sarcophagus contained funeral gifts including 14 vases, cups, flasks and a knife.

Way cool find update Germany's Bronze Age Blockbuster

The 3,600 year old Sky Disk of Nebra -- the world's oldest image of the cosmos -- is the centerpiece of the biggest Bronze Age show of Europe, in the eastern German town of Halle.

It caused a world-wide sensation when it was brought to the attention of the German public in 2002, having been discovered in the state of Saxony-Anhalt two years earlier.

Now the Sky Disc of Nebra -- a bronze disc with gold-leaf appliques representing the sun, moon, stars and a ship -- is back in the limelight, at the opening of a blockbuster show entitled "The Forged Sky: The Wide World in the Heart of Europe 3,600 Years Ago."

But hey, the Sky Disk of Nebra just can't compete with the Small Piece of Porous, Blackened Pottery of Hutchinson Island Hutchinson Island artifact find the oldest yet

The oldest artifact ever found on the island -- a 4,000-year-old small piece of porous, blackened pottery -- was discovered Friday as archaeologists surveyed three newly uncovered American Indian graves.

Bob Carr, executive director of the Miami-based Archaeological and Historical Conservancy, said both the small pottery shard and the location of at least three graves in the rock south of Gilbert's Bar House of Refuge were exciting and historically significant.

There were probably many more graves, estimated to be at least 2,000 years old, on the property than the few exposed, he said.

"It's as if someone flipped open a door 2,000 years in the past that no one has ever seen before," Carr said. "It's in really good condition."

Big ka-freakin'-boom dept. Roman Comet 5,000 Times More Powerful Than A-Bomb

People living in southern Germany during Roman times may have witnessed a comet impact 5,000 times more destructive than the Hiroshima atom bomb, researchers say.

Scientists believe a field of craters around Lake Chiemsee, in south-east Bavaria, was caused by fragments of a huge comet that broke up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Celtic artefacts found at the site, including a number of coins, appear to have been strongly heated on one side.

CSI: Deerfield Beach

Archaeologists asked to solve cemetery mystery

It may appear to be ordinary soil, but some say a mystery lies beneath.

To hear old-timers tell it, this patch of land is hallowed ground that may still hold the bones of people who died long ago.

The wooden crosses that marked their graves have long since vanished, worn away by wind and rain. But pioneer families and historians say as many as 300 people, mostly poor black residents, were buried there from 1896 through the 1940s.

"That was a graveyard, I can tell you that much," said Deerfield Beach resident Edith Storr, 75, whose uncle once dug graves there.

Here's a few items. For some reason, we haven't received the weekly EEF news, but we'll post that whenever we get it.
Update: The official EEF computer has been down, hence no EEF news until probably early next week.

Missing muscles and average 'nads Michangelo's David Missing a Back Muscle

Michelangelo's David, the towering sculpture acclaimed for its depiction of male physical perfection, has a "hole" in the back, two anatomy professors announced at a recent conference in Florence.

Computer measurements of David's body taken by professors Massimo Gulisano and colleague Pietro Bernabei of Florence University show a hollow instead of a muscle on the right side of the back, between the spine and the shoulder blade.

. . .

Even David's genitals, which seem out of proportion to most viewers, are anatomically correct for a male body in a "pre-fight tension," the researchers said.

Males everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief.

Ruins wreck building plans

Construction workers for the American firm Bechtel found neolithic ruins which are more than 6 000 years old while building a highway in Romania, archaeologists said on Thursday.

"It is a surprising discovery of great importance for the region," Ion Stanciu, who heads a team of archaeologists, told AFP.

He said the ruins consisted of a funeral stone, the remains of several houses from the bronze age, and pieces of pottery.

"We are going to suggest to officials from Bechtel to consider building a museum to house these exceptional discoveries," Stanciu said.

News from Egypt Both pagan and Christian

Why not move the Temple of Khnum to the edge of the desert, and re-erect it a short distance from the Monastery of the Three Thousand Six Hundred Martyrs (Deir Manaos wa Al-Shohadaa) that stands at the foot of the limestone plateau to the west of the city? Here not only would the temple be quite safe from further damage, but the juxtaposition of these two monuments, with their roots in the same period of Egyptian history, would also provide a vivid insight into an important historical reality -- the persecution of the Christians under the Roman emperors who are depicted in the temple's reliefs.

Antiquities Market update Stolen relics go home to Egypt

More than 600 Egyptian antiquities flew back to Egypt from the UK on Thursday, four years after they were stolen and smuggled out.

Wadia Hanna from Egypt's prosecutor-general's office said the items were stolen before being shipped to London via Switzerland.

They were seized by British authorities at Heathrow airport.

They include two pharaoh coffins inscribed with hieroglyphics and ceramics from the Greek era.

We're not sure what this picture has to do with the story, but we rather approve of it.



Cool preservation once again ROMAN REMAINS WERE PRESERVED IN CLAY

PRICELESS Roman artifacts were preserved in Carlisle for thousands of years because they were encased in one and a half metres of waterlogged clay.

The objects – clothes, leather chariot straps and coins – would normally rot.

John Zant, of Oxford Archaeology North, said scientists have used specialist techniques to prove the objects recovered were originally from a Roman Fort established in the winter of AD 73.

He said: “The sticky layers of natural clay at the site mean there has been an unusual degree of preservation.

“We have a preservation period spanning 100 years, and the number and quality of the objects is outstanding.

Burial controversy Fate of burial site stirs emotions

Portsmouth, N.H., attorney John P. McGee Jr. finds it abhorrent to drive over the spot where untold numbers of black people were buried several hundred years ago in unmarked graves. He wants the city of Portsmouth to honor the site, even if it means shutting down a city street.

''What is disturbing to me is that a decision was made in the 18th century to pave over those graves and, in my opinion, desecrate them," said McGee at a public meeting in Portsmouth on the issue this summer. ''I don't care if they're African-Americans or some other ethnic group or Yankees; the fact that they were paved over and that now cars go over them is extremely disturbing to me."

Looks like they're working something out, which is good.

The age-old battle Treasure hunter, state battle over 17th century ship

A 17th century vessel under Lake Michigan, considered by some the Holy Grail of Great Lakes shipwrecks, may have been found, but its ownership is mired in a storm of a court battle.

Field Museum archeologists are analyzing the find, but were tight-lipped Monday.

"We do have a research interest in this ship,'' confirmed Field spokesman Greg Borzo. The museum has been consulting with Steven Libert, who discovered what may be Le Griffon at the entrance of Wisconsin's Green Bay, and with Michigan state officials, who are reportedly trying to gain control of the ship.

We reported on this earlier. Can't recall when, but we do recognize it.

Stairway to saltmines Europe's oldest wooden staircase found in Austria

A 3,000-year-old wooden staircase has been found at Hallstatt in northern Austria, immaculately preserved in a Bronze Age salt mine, Vienna's Natural History Museum said.

"We have found a wooden staircase which dates from the 13th century B.C. It is the oldest wooden staircase discovered to date in Europe, maybe even in the world," Hans Reschreiter, the director of excavations at the museum, told AFP.

"The staircase is in perfect condition because the micro-organisms that cause wood to decompose do not exist in salt mines," he added.

We're not sure a staircase is all that important to anyone, except that it's kind of cool and is yet another example of an environment where organics may be repserved indefinitely.

Experts to Explore Architecture, Lifestyle in 6,000-Year-Old Mound

Iranian archeologists are about to embark on an exploration project in the Marvdasht plateau in a bid to discover relics of architecture and recognize its inhabitants’ lifestyles, Iranian Cultural Heritage News Agency reported.

Rahmat-Abad mound is one of the most historically significant settlements in Marvdasht, measuring 115 m in length and 75 m in width and 4.5 m in height. It is now defenselessly exposed to vehicles that pass along it on the road from Sa’adat-shahr to Marvdasht in the southern province of Fars.

We don't know the significance of this either, but, well, there you go.

Many mummies and artifacts discovered by French team in Al-Monira

The French team excavating at Kharga Oasis have made an archaeological discovery 8 kilometers from Al-Monira village.

The team unearthed a Greco- Roman cemetery embracing tombs carved in a sandstone hill.

The tombs which are irregularly clustered mostly comprise a small burial room 1.5 meters high and a burial well from 1 to 2 meters deep.

The facade of the tombs is made of white limestone jambs fixed with mortar.

Inside the tombs, the team found limestone and wooden sarcophagi in addition to a collection of sarcophagi made of sun-dried brick coated with gypsum.

We know, we know, Greco-Roman stuff, big yawn. But the Egyptian oases (Kharga, Dakhla, Bahariya, Fayum. . .) are fascinating areas to work in since they were geographically isolated to a certain degree from the main Nile valley. Plus, they're quite distinctly bounded areas so you can do nice settlement pattern work there.

Rare finds at archaeological site

Archaeological work in south east Cornwall is uncovering the history of the area.

A team from the county council working at Scarcewater near St Stephen-in-Brannel says its finds are significant.

Fieldwork has revealed a history of ceremonial and settlement activity at Scarcewater spanning five millennia.

The finds represent the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron ages, and include hearth pits, pottery, a stock enclosure and roundhouses.

DIg and dash They dug, dashed: One tribe's covert operations

Here's what probably happened, Donald Blakeslee says: One day, a band of farmers and hunters pulled on their walking shoes and hiked all the way to the southern Flint Hills, about 64 miles straight east.

They were trespassing, more or less; violating other people's property rights, which is still a serious matter in Kansas.

So the hunters stepped lightly.

Oddly written story, but interesting from the perspective of explaining how raw materials were obtained. Stone tool material was, in fact, very valuable to people who did not live near a source of the stuff so it is possible that they could have 'stolen' it. Why they just didn't establish a trading relationship is not explained.

Note: Chert really = flint. Chert is the general name given to a class of microsrystalline quartz, formed by the precipitation of silicates. 'Flint' is generally reserved for a particular sort of chert formed in chalks or very pure limestone, usually black or very dark gray. Jasper is also a form of chert.

Ha ha haaaaa. . .we'd never heard that pun before! "Can You Dig It?" A Fun Way To Learn About Archeology

Recently the Southern Oregon Historical Society held a fascinating event called "Can You Dig It?" This was a true hands-on archaeology experience where adults and children alike could get down and dirty. If you are captivated with "CSI" on television, here was a chance to do part of their everyday duties, such as plaster casting and piecing together broken remnants and more.

Certainly more fun than the first two years of graduate school. . . .

Good show TOP AWARDS FOR DESIGNS ON THE PAST BY ARCHAEOLOGISTS OF THE FUTURE

Move over Mick Aston and get ready to hang up your trowel Harding - there’s a couple of new kids on your archaeological block.

At the prestigious British Archaeological Awards in Belfast on October 8, organised by the Council for British Archaeology, Bethany Smith and Christopher Cannell were declared Young Archaeologists of the Year.

Organised by the Young Archaeologists’ Club, the award is now in its 27th year and aims to promote an understanding and appreciation of archaeology in the British Isles.

More stiffs Restoration of old courthouse halted by discovery of old cemetery

Restoration work on an old Cameron County Courthouse in downtown Brownsville has stopped.
That's after crews unearthed graves in an old cemetery while digging a utility-line trench in a county parking lot across the street from what's now called the Dancy Building.

Officials tell The Brownsville Herald that the graveyard across from the 1912 courthouse dates to 1848.

Texas Historical Commission executive director F. Lawrence Oaks says from two to four graves were disturbed in the graveyard, which he understands was abandoned in 1850. He's ordered all work halted until an archaeologist examines the area.

That's the whole thing.

Yay, a new post was finally accepted. We've been having trouble lately getting things to actually post. Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to get the latest out to you, our valued reader.

Mystery solved Mysteries of the mesa solved

Almost a century after these ancient Indian ruins became a national park in 1906, strange earthen formations near the cliff and mesa-top dwellings continued to puzzle and divide scientists, until recently.
One mysterious dirt mound, 200 feet across, rises 16 feet above the floor of Morefield
Canyon. A 1,400-foot path or channel extends from it, making it resemble an upside-down frying pan with a long, flat handle.
And then there was the large depression in the park's heart on Chapin Mesa. It was labeled for years as either a prehistoric amphitheater or perhaps an impoundment of water — nicknamed Mummy Lake — with no known source of water.
Now, scientists know the depression was part of an elaborate water storage system and have dubbed it Far View Reservoir. And Morefield Canyon's elevated mound, which does not resemble a reservoir, was a storage facility that could have held 120,000 gallons of water.

We think this is fascinating. There was also a story several years ago of some archaeologists studying some odd trench features associated with raised-field agriculture in South America. No one really knew what the function of the trenches were other than irrigation and protecting the planted parts from the high ground water. Turns out the water in the tranches retained some heat from the day and prevented frost from ruining the crops.

Here's a link to the guy who did this work. Explanation of raised-field agriculture from page 3 of this link:

Raised fields are large artificial platforms of soil created to protect crops from flooding. They are generally found in areas of permanent high water table or seasonal flooding. The addition of earth for drainage also increases the depth of the rich topsoil available to plants. In the process of building raised fields, canals are excavated adjacent to and between fields. These depressions fill with water during the growing season and provide irrigation when necessary. Decomposing aquatic plants and nutrients captured in the canals provide a fertile "muck" or "green manure" for periodically renewing the soils of the platforms. We found that in the high Andes where "killer" frost is a serious problem at night, the water in the canals of raised fields helps to store thesun’s heat and blanket the fields in warm air at night—protecting crops against the cold. Raised fields have been found to be highly productive, and if managed properly, can be planted and harvested for many years.

It's not often archaeology can be used to actually improve the lives of existing people. But in this case at least ancient agricultural methods have been resurrected and turn out to be more appropriate for the area than more modern techniques.

Buckeye rocks An ancient quarry: Indians found high-quality, colored stones at Ohio site

Little-known Flint Ridge may be the most important historical site in Ohio, but it's a place that's unfamiliar to most people.Flint Ridge State Memorial in southeast Licking County marks the site where ancient Indians quarried brightly colored flint, starting 11,000 or more years ago.

The Indians needed razor-sharp flint for tools, weapons, ceremonial objects and jewelry, and
Flint Ridge offered high-quality stone in a rainbow of colors: pink, gray, white, black and copper.

The Ohio flint had a high quartz content, flecked with crystals that made it shine when polished by the Hopewell Indians.

Oops Lost letter spells heritage 'disaster'

A DEVELOPMENT which archaeologists claim could destroy thousands of years of Welsh history was given the go- ahead because a letter went missing.

Monmouth Archaeological Society is dismayed an extension to a business on Monmouth's Monnow Street is taking place without, they allege, proper precautions to protect the town's heritage.

They claim permission was granted for the property to be modified without an archaeological evaluation first taking place and that no requirement was made for the developers to have an expert on site.

. . .

Monmouthshire County Council's head of planning said a letter was sent to umbrella group Glamorgan and Gwent Archaeological Trust but it never arrived.

See? If they only used email. . . .

Hmmm. Searching for the 'Mayan Atlantis'

A team of international archaeologists have set sail from Mexico to seek a sunken city that has been dubbed the "Mayan Atlantis", press reports said on Monday.

Quoted by the Mexican newspaper Milenio, team leader Paulina Zelintzky, a Russian archaeologist, said sonar equipment had given indications there could be ancient structures on the ocean floor between Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and Cuba.

According to Milenio, resonances showed geometric images similar to pyramids and round structures. The archaeologists will search the area using a mini-submarine known as "Deep Worker".

Signs there could be Mayan remains on the seabed first surfaced in 2000 when the area next to Cuba's westernmost tip was being explored for petroleum.

Before beginning their project, the archaeologists had to raise $2-million (about R13-million). They set sail from the port of Progreso in eastern Mexico on the Yucatan peninsula. - Spa-dpa

That's the whole thing. We're rather dubious of this since many geological features can be mistaken for man-made objects. Besides being excellent pattern-recognition animals, the old adage that nature abhors right angles (in addition to a vaccuum) is not really true.

At least they could still dance. . . Artifacts a field of dreams for Mexican village

The ancestors on the hill left no written record. Until a team of Chicago archaeologists came, nobody really thought much about them. And, strangely, some of the urns they left behind showed supernatural figures with two left hands. (hint hint -- Ed.)

Nevertheless, this small village hopes a connection with the 6th century Zapotec community on the nearby hilltop will help preserve their 21st century future, or at least keep some of the teenagers from leaving for Los Angeles.

Good news from Afghanistan Afghan archaeology on road to recovery

Persian and Hellenistic strata uncovered in Bagram (ancient Kapissa) were bulldozed into the ground and destroyed. The Great Buddha from the Bamiyan Valley was dynamited. Everywhere the Taliban destroyed anything that told a story about Afghanistan's cultural and historical heritage, predating their particularly sectarian version of "history."

Now Afghanistan is recovering from years of war and civil strife. Seventy years of hard work and research have been lost through the chaos and anarchy of war. The central government had become so weak that it was not in a position to protect any public or state properties. In the early 1990's, over 60,000 citizens of Kabul died in the fighting, and nearly 70 percent of the objects in the National Museum were plundered.

Remember this when you read yet another story on the Iraq museum and archaeology.

Mystery solved Mysteries of the mesa solved

Almost a century after these ancient Indian ruins became a national park in 1906, strange earthen formations near the cliff and mesa-top dwellings continued to puzzle and divide scientists, until recently.
Image
One mysterious dirt mound, 200 feet across, rises 16 feet above the floor of Morefield Canyon. A 1,400-foot path or channel extends from it, making it resemble an upside-down frying pan with a long, flat handle.
And then there was the large depression in the park's heart on Chapin Mesa. It was labeled for years as either a prehistoric amphitheater or perhaps an impoundment of water — nicknamed Mummy Lake — with no known source of water.
Now, scientists know the depression was part of an elaborate water storage system and have dubbed it Far View Reservoir. And Morefield Canyon's elevated mound, which does not resemble a reservoir, was a storage facility that could have held 120,000 gallons of water.

We think this is fascinating. There was also a story several years ago of some archaeologists studying some odd trench features associated with raised-field agriculture in South America. No one really knew what the function of the trenches were other than irrigation and protecting the planted parts from the high ground water. Turns out the water in the tranches retained some heat from the day and prevented frost from ruining the crops.

Here's a link to the guy who did this work. Explanation of raised-field agriculture from page 3 of this link:

Raised fields are large artificial platforms of soil created to protect crops from flooding. They are generally found in areas of permanent high water table or seasonal flooding. The addition of earth for drainage also increases the depth of the rich topsoil available to plants. In the process of building raised fields, canals are excavated adjacent to and between fields. These depressions fill with water during the growing season and provide irrigation when necessary. Decomposing aquatic plants and nutrients captured in the canals provide a fertile "muck" or "green manure" for periodically renewing the soils of the platforms. We found that in the high Andes where "killer" frost is a serious problem at night, the water in the canals of raised fields helps to store thesun’s heat and blanket the fields in warm air at night—protecting crops against the cold. Raised fields have been found to be highly productive, and if managed properly, can be planted and harvested for many years.

It's not often archaeology can be used to actually improve the lives of existing people. But in this case at least ancient agricultural methods have been resurrected and turn out to be more appropriate for the area than more modern techniques.

Buckeye rocks An ancient quarry: Indians found high-quality, colored stones at Ohio site

Little-known Flint Ridge may be the most important historical site in Ohio, but it's a place that's unfamiliar to most people.

Flint Ridge State Memorial in southeast Licking County marks the site where ancient Indians quarried brightly colored flint, starting 11,000 or more years ago.

The Indians needed razor-sharp flint for tools, weapons, ceremonial objects and jewelry, and Flint Ridge offered high-quality stone in a rainbow of colors: pink, gray, white, black and copper.

The Ohio flint had a high quartz content, flecked with crystals that made it shine when polished by the Hopewell Indians.

Oops Lost letter spells heritage 'disaster'

A DEVELOPMENT which archaeologists claim could destroy thousands of years of Welsh history was given the go- ahead because a letter went missing.

Monmouth Archaeological Society is dismayed an extension to a business on Monmouth's Monnow Street is taking place without, they allege, proper precautions to protect the town's heritage.

They claim permission was granted for the property to be modified without an archaeological evaluation first taking place and that no requirement was made for the developers to have an expert on site.

. . .

Monmouthshire County Council's head of planning said a letter was sent to umbrella group Glamorgan and Gwent Archaeological Trust but it never arrived.

See? If they only used email. . . .

Hmmm. Searching for the 'Mayan Atlantis'

A team of international archaeologists have set sail from Mexico to seek a sunken city that has been dubbed the "Mayan Atlantis", press reports said on Monday.

Quoted by the Mexican newspaper Milenio, team leader Paulina Zelintzky, a Russian archaeologist, said sonar equipment had given indications there could be ancient structures on the ocean floor between Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and Cuba.

According to Milenio, resonances showed geometric images similar to pyramids and round structures. The archaeologists will search the area using a mini-submarine known as "Deep Worker".

Signs there could be Mayan remains on the seabed first surfaced in 2000 when the area next to Cuba's westernmost tip was being explored for petroleum.

Before beginning their project, the archaeologists had to raise $2-million (about R13-million). They set sail from the port of Progreso in eastern Mexico on the Yucatan peninsula. - Sapa-dpa

That's the whole thing. We're rather dubious of this since many geological features can be mistaken for man-made objects. Besides being excellent pattern-recognition animals, the old adage that nature abhors right angles (in addition to a vaccuum) is not really true.

At least they could still dance. . . Artifacts a field of dreams for Mexican village

The ancestors on the hill left no written record. Until a team of Chicago archaeologists came, nobody really thought much about them. And, strangely, some of the urns they left behind showed supernatural figures with two left hands. (hint hint -- Ed.)

Nevertheless, this small village hopes a connection with the 6th century Zapotec community on the nearby hilltop will help preserve their 21st century future, or at least keep some of the teenagers from leaving for Los Angeles.

Good news from Afghanistan Afghan archaeology on road to recovery

Persian and Hellenistic strata uncovered in Bagram (ancient Kapissa) were bulldozed into the ground and destroyed. The Great Buddha from the Bamiyan Valley was dynamited. Everywhere the Taliban destroyed anything that told a story about Afghanistan's cultural and historical heritage, predating their particularly sectarian version of "history."

Now Afghanistan is recovering from years of war and civil strife. Seventy years of hard work and research have been lost through the chaos and anarchy of war. The central government had become so weak that it was not in a position to protect any public or state properties. In the early 1990's, over 60,000 citizens of Kabul died in the fighting, and nearly 70 percent of the objects in the National Museum were plundered.

Remember this when you read yet another story on the Iraq museum and archaeology.

We'll have more news up later on today, as we are a bit off from a profound lack of sleep last night, not to mention numerous other duties commanding our attention (much less important, but far more urgent than the latest archaeological news, we assure you). To whet your appetites we forward the following posting from the EEF as a follow-up on a story posted here in the recent past regarding an Arab scholar who apparently had decoded Egyptian hieroglyphs several hundred years before those in the West (original article here). Aayko Eyma reports that these two pieces are "A press release of the UCL on which the inaccurate Observer report was based but with the usual media spices added and a statement by Dr. Okasha El Daly in answer to media enquires."

UCL Press release
3 October 2004

Hieroglyphics cracked 1,000 years earlier than thought
Western scholars were not the first to decipher the ancient language of the
pharaohs, according to a new book that will be published later this year by
a UCL researcher.

Dr Okasha El Daly of UCL's Institute of Archaeology will reveal that Arabic
scholars not only took a keen interest in ancient Egypt but also correctly
interpreted hieroglyphics in the ninth century AD - almost 1,000 years
earlier than previously thought.

It has long been thought that Jean-Francois Champollion was the first person
to crack hieroglyphics in 1822 using newly discovered Egyptian antiquities
such as the Rosetta stone. But fresh analysis of manuscripts tucked away in
long forgotten collections scattered across the globe prove that Arabic
scholars got there first.

Dr Okasha El Daly, of UCL's Institute of Archaeology, explains:

"For two and a half centuries the study of Egyptology has been dominated by
a Euro-centric view, which has virtually ignored over a thousand years of
Arabic scholarship and enquiry encouraged by Islam.

"Prior to Napoleonic times little was known in the West about the ancient
civilisation of Egypt except what had been recorded in the Bible. It was
assumed that the world of the pharaohs had long since been forgotten by
Egyptians, who were thought to have been incorporated into the expanding
Islamic world by the seventh century.

"But this overhasty conclusion ignores the vast contribution of medieval
Arabic scholars and others between the seventh and 16th centuries. In
reality a huge corpus of medieval writing by both scholars and ordinary
people exists that dates from long before the earliest European Renaissance.

Analysis reveals that not only did Moslems have a deep interest in the study
of Ancient Egypt, they could also correctly decipher hieroglyphic script."

Following the Roman invasion of Egypt in 30 BC the use of hieroglyphics
began to die out with the last known writing in the fifth century AD.

While Western medieval commentators believed that hieroglyphics were symbols
each representing a single concept Dr El Daly has shown that Arab scholars
grasped the fundamental principle that hieroglyphics could represent sounds
as well as ideas.

Using his unique expertise in both Egyptology and medieval Arabic writers,
Dr El Daly began a seven year investigation of Arabic writing on ancient
Egypt.

"The manuscripts were scattered worldwide in private as well as public
collections and were mostly not catalogued. Even when they were, they were
often wrongly classified so I had to go through each one individually - it
is not like researching in modern books with an index which you can check
for relevant information," says Dr El Daly.

"A specialist in only Arabic or Islamic studies reading these manuscripts
would fail to grasp their significance to Egyptology. Conversely
Egyptologists think that Arabs and Moslems had nothing useful to say about
ancient Egypt, so there wasn't any need to look at manuscripts that were
mainly the domain of scholars within the disciplines of Arabic/Oriental
studies."

The breakthrough in Dr El Daly's research came from analysis of the work of
Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah, a ninth century alchemist. Ibn Wahshiyah's
work on ancient writing systems showed that he was able to correctly
decipher many hieroglyphic signs. Being an alchemist not a linguist, his
primary interest was to identify the phonetic value and meaning of
hieroglyphic signs with the aim of accessing the ancient Egyptian scientific
knowledge inscribed in hieroglyphs.

"By comparing Ibn Wahshiyah's conclusions with those in current books on
Egyptian Language, I was able to assess his accuracy in understanding
hieroglyphic signs," says Dr El Daly.

"In particular I looked at the Egyptian Grammar of Sir Alan Gardiner which
has a sign list at the end, it revealed that Ibn Wahshiyah understood
perfectly well the nature of Egyptian hieroglyphs."

Dr El Daly added: "Western culture misinterprets Islam because we think
teaching before the Quran is shunned, which isn't the case. They valued
history and assumed that Egypt was a land of science and wisdom and as such
they wanted to learn their language to have access to such vast knowledge.

"Critically they did not, unlike the West, write history to fit with the
religious ideas of the time, which makes their accounts more reliable. They
were also keen on the universality of human history based on the unity of
the origin of human beings and the diversity of their appearance and
languages. Furthermore, there are likely to be many hidden manuscripts
dotted round the world that could make a significant contribution to our
understanding of the ancient world.

Dr Okasha El Daly is based in UCL's Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology,
one of the world's largest collections of artefacts covering thousands of
years of ancient Egyptian prehistory and history. On Wednesday 6 October UCL
launches the biggest university fundraising campaign, Advancing London's
Global University - the Campaign for UCL, which will seek to raise £300
million over the coming decade, including £25 million to build a purpose
built museum, the Panopticon, that will house UCL's collections of
Egyptology, art and rare books in an environment that preserves them for all
to see.

The Panopticon, which means 'all-visible' in Greek, will be unlike any other
museum in the UK because the entire collection will be on display and
publicly accessible. Other highlights will include works by Durer,
Rembrandt, Turner and Constable; an unrivalled collection of John Flaxman's
drawings and sculpture; the first edition of Milton's Paradise Lost and the
George Orwell archives.

(end of press release)

The short report in the Observer failed to mention that Ibn Wahishiyah is
one of several medieval Arabic scholars that I used for my research which
covered much wider issues. My main concern when I started almost a decade
ago, was to establish whether Moslems/Arabs ever too serious interest in the
study of Ancient Egypt and if so, what interested them most. The result was
beyond my expectations with several profound findings only one of them was
the issue of the correct decipherment of hieroglyphs. The most important
finding is simply the fact that they were so interested in anything ancient
Egyptian that they left behind countless number of studies still in
manuscript form waiting serious attention . I only scratched the surface.
One minor finding was that they reached a correct understanding of the
nature and function of hieroglyphic, that is not to say they understood
a whole text in hieroglyphs but they correctly identified the phonetic
value of several letters having understood in the first place that these
were not just pretty pictures. Moreover, in the case of Ibn Wahishiyah,
he understood that some hieroglyphic signs served as what he called
"determinatives" which is exactly what we call them in our modern
Egyptology studies. Please also get a copy of the following book
and read my chapter:

El Daly, O. (2003) Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings. In P. Ucko and
T. Champion (eds) The Wisdom of Egypt: changing visions through ages. UCL
Press. pp. 40-63.

You should be able to get a copy from the library or order one from your
local bookshop.
My main book based on my PhD these, will be published by the same press,
(University College London) UCL Press as Egyptology: The Missing
Millennium. Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings.
Hopefully it will be ready by early December 2004.

However here is a brief answer to some of your questions:
Ibn Wahishiya was an Iraqi alchemist who lived at the end of the
9th century and early 10th century, he wrote several books claiming
that he only translated them from ancient sources (dating to before Islam)
and among his books are ones on agriculture, poisons, magic..etc. But
one of his most remarkable is this book on Decipherment of Ancient
Scripts including ancient Egyptians. This book was translated by
Hammer into English and published in London 1806, 14 years
before Champollion announced his famous theory of deciphering hieroglyphs.
Ibn Wahishiya may have never seen Rosetta stone, but there are dozen
monuments in Egypt which had several languages/scripts inscribed on them, in
fact now in Cairo Museum there is an identical but complete one like Rosetta
stone. Even in Tehran Museum there is a famous statue of King Darius the
Great (5th century BC) which has hieroglyphic text as well as 3 more
languages. So objects likes these would have easily been available to Arab
scholars.
That he knew the correct phonetic (sound) value of many Egyptian hieroglyphs
is clear from his book but he went further understanding the function of
what we call in language studies "determinatives".

All these and the plates from unpublished Arabic manuscripts will be in my
forthcoming book mentioned above.

One of the plates already published in the above cited chapter of mine,
represents a medieval Arab attempt (by an Iraqi alchemist called
Abu Al-Qasim Al-Iraqi 14th century) to copy an ancient Egyptian
stela and it is clear that the copyist did very well considering that his
main interest is gaining alchemical knowledge since he was an
alchemist. But anybody who can read Egyptian hieroglyphs can easily
read most of this stela which has the name of King Amenemhat II, of the
12th Dynasty who reigned between 1922-1878 BCE.

Okasha El Daly

Dr. Okasha El Daly
Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology

Online paper alert David Meltzer has provided an (apparently free) link to a paper he co-authored with Mike Cannon on his web site. It's an examination of the early Paleoindian record with implications for terminal Pleistocene extinctions in North America:

Early Paleoindian foraging: examining the faunal evidence for large mammal specialization and regional variability in prey choice Michael D. Cannon and David J. Meltzer

North American archaeologists have spent much effort debating whether Early Paleoindian foragers were specialized hunters of megafauna or whether they pursued more generalized subsistence strategies. In doing so, many have treated the foraging practices of early North Americans as if they must have been uniform across the continent, even though others have pointed out that adaptations appear to have varied among groups inhabiting different kinds of environments. Resolving these issues fully requires referring to archaeofaunal data and evaluating those data critically. In this paper, we conduct such an evaluation of the existing Early Paleoindian faunal record, which we then use to test the hypothesis that early Americans across the continent specialized in the hunting of megafauna. After detailed attention is given to taphonomic issues, to the limited geographical distribution of sites with secure associations between humans and prey taxa, and to differences among sites in the roles that they likely played in settlement and subsistence systems, it becomes clear that the faunal record provides little support for the idea that all, or even any, Early Paleoindian foragers were megafaunal specialists. It does appear, however, that there was considerable variability in Early Paleoindian prey choice across the continent, which was likely related to variability in the environments that different groups inhabited.

Money quote: That is, there is no a priori reason why Clovis mammoth hunters of the plains and southwest, rather than, for example, early hunters of medium-sized artiodactyls in the northeast, should be used as a model for hunters in places where Early Paleoindian subsistence practices are, as of yet, largely unknown. Indeed, as we have noted, there is perhaps better faunal evidence to support the idea that the early inhabitants of the intermountain west focused their hunting on medium-sized artiodactyls like mountain sheep than there is to support a hypothesis of specialization on megafauna.

Thus, an assumption of continent-wide adaptive uniformity is not supported by the faunal record at hand. . . .

Sadly, a very close reading of the archaeological literature on many subjects reveals that often our notions of what actually took place are strongly influenced by what we think we know rather than what can be empirically demonstrated.

Repatriation update UK museums face controversial Ethiopian legacy

British Museum (BM) director Neil MacGregor has decided that there is one small group of objects within his care that no one, not even he, should be allowed to see. These are tabots, which are regarded by Ethiopian Christians as representing the original Ark of the Covenant, the wooden chest which once housed the Ten Commandments. The Ark was placed in the Temple in Jerusalem by King Solomon in the 10th century BC, and the Ethiopian Orthodox church believes that it was later taken to Aksum, in the north of
the country.

Tabots are wooden tablets which must be hidden from view, and should only be seen by the senior clergy. It is highly sacrilegious for them to be viewed by other believers, let alone non-believers.

Upshot is that they (the BM) are working on perhaps a renewable 5-year-term loan (read: permanent) to the Church; the objects would be housed in a London church.

Medieval dentistry Medieval teeth 'better than Baldrick's'

Think of medieval England and you are likely to conjure up an image of a wizened hag with black stumps for teeth.

But although that might have been the unfortunate state of some people's teeth, others had much better care.

Documents show that, not only were the educationally elite aware of the importance of keeping their teeth clean, but they also knew how to fill cavities and deal with facial fractures.

They could recognise oral cancer and even knew the rudiments of teeth whitening.

Iron Age horse burial unearthed

A RARE ritual burial of four horses has been discovered in an area experts regard as a sacred landscape surrounding one of the most important prehistoric sites in the North of England.
Carbon dating shows the horses – lying nose to tail at Nosterfield Quarry close to Thornborough Henges, north of Ripon – were buried around 50AD, shortly after the Romans arrived in Britain.
The burial pit, or barrow, was found earlier this year as a team from Field Archaeological Specialists, based at York University, watched over the removal of topsoil at the sand and gravel quarry.
Zoo-archaeologist Steve Rowland, who uncovered them, said: "Two of the skeletons were virtually intact, but the other two had been accidentally damaged through ploughing of the land in previous years.

Book corner History Of Archaeology

Archaeology, or digging up History by scientific methods, yields three-dimensional clues about the Past, and then goes mute. It is accorded voice by the qualified diggers who sift through the disinterred ‘remains’ or decipher the stone and copper inscriptions to tell what these could have meant in times past, and their significance in the present. The most exacting of the historical crafts, it still requires a professional narrator—the Archaeologist, who second-guesses, surmises, collates, piecing together the shards and shreds to build a reasoned story.

What a great quote. We admit to knowing very little regarding Indian archaeology.

Pickin' over the Picayune Archaeology chapter digs for Picayune's past

Cloudy skies and a rain forecast didn't stop the approximately 20 archaeology enthusiasts from looking for relics from Picayune's past, particularly the past as associated with native Americans that lived in the area.

The archaeologists chose as the spot for their "dig" a high ridge overlooking Hobolochitto Creek near The Hermitage. They named the site of their dig after the property owner who is allowing them to study the spot, Huey Stockstill. The spot was selected because earlier scouting finds, such as pottery shards by Larry Pearson and other materials unearthed in a "shovel test" by Robert Reams, U.S. Forest Service archaeologist for the DeSoto National Forest District.

Historic find on building site

Historic artefacts dating back 3,500 years have been unearthed on a development site for luxury apartments near Loch Lomond.

The team of 15 archaeologists excavating the site believe they have uncovered settlements which include 7th century Christian cemeteries.

The plot has yielded objects spanning the Bronze and Ice Ages and early Christian and Medieval times.

The find includes cremation pots, jewellery and corn-drying kilns.

Heh: "It's cost us half a million quid paying the archaeologists, which is a planning requirement, but at least we'll have some good names for the golf course holes."

Give them free golf, too!

More here.

Black Sea update 7-Foot Robot Used in Black Sea Expedition

Four years ago, scientists thought they had found the perfect place to settle the Noah flood debate: A farmer's house on a bluff overlooking the Black Sea built about 7,500 years ago - just before tidal waves inundated the homestead, submerged miles of coastline and turned the freshwater lake into a salty sea.

Some believed the rectangular site of stones and wood could help solve the age-old question of whether the Black Sea's flooding was the event recounted in the Biblical story of Noah.

That story told of a calamitous flood occurring over 40 days and nights. Scientists had largely dismissed it, believing the Black Sea filled up gradually with gently rising waters. That wisdom was rocked, however, when two scholars claimed several years ago that the Black Sea's flooding was more recent - and so rapid and widespread that it forced people to move as far away as mainland Europe.

Scientists who in the summer of 2003 visited the underwater site off the northern Turkish coastal town of Sinop couldn't arrive at any conclusions. The settlement, about 330 feet underwater, was "contaminated" by wood that had drifted in, foiling any attempt to accurately date the ruin - and thus date the flood.

Darn it.

Make sure to check out Nat. Geo's Black Sea site as well.

Scientists search Chinese site for evidence of early man

Scientists have started drilling holes into the ground around the Peking Man site near Beijing in hopes of finding more relics from the ancient representative of the human race.

The project, jointly conducted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Electricite de France, aims to drill nine holes of up to 30 metres in depth, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The scientists hope the effort will result in evidence of early human activity in the area, as suggested by previous preliminary investigations, according to the agency.

The discovery of the 500,000-year-old Peking Man was one of the most decisive steps in the scientific quest to trace man's prehistoric development from the apes.

Since Peking Man was first unearthed in 1929, archaeologists have found fossils belonging to 40 different individuals and more than 100,000 stone implements and other objects.

The Zhoukoudian area, where the Peking Man's cave is located, was listed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation as a world heritage site in 1987.

That's the whole thing.

News from. . . .Bam!

Bam Ancient Body Remains Reach 36, Iran

The upsurge in the number of skeletons found in the surviving walls of the Bam Citadel, southern Iran, has tossed the biggest mystery for local archeologists in recent history.

Since 2 months ago, experts have exhumed over 36 remains buried inside the adobe walls of the 2,500-year-old fort, considered the world's biggest mud-brick structure prior to its almost complete devastation in a major earthquake last December.

"Most of the discovered remains belong to children and this has made us face an enormous puzzle. You could say it is the biggest mystery of the Bam Citadel since it has been academically studied," said Eskandar Mokhtari, head of the Project for Salvaging Bam.

That's the whole thing.

And more from Iran ran, US Set to Dig Rare Elamite City

A joint team of Iranian and American archeologists are set to start the latest season of excavation in the historical city of Enshan, left from the Elamite era.

It is one of the rare cities remained from the period and already numerous seasons of excavations have yielded precious artifacts.

Starting from next week, the experts hope to unravel some questions about the Iranian civilization up to the second millennium B.C., said Masoud Azarnoush, head of the research center at Iran's Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (CHTO).

Five American archeologists, some from the Pennsylvania University, would assist their Iranian counterparts in the latest season of excavation.

We've reported here on the recent moves by Iran to invite more archaeologists into the country. This is a positive development, as Iran is one of the richest and most important nations archaeologically speaking. The collaborative nature is something most countries are insisting upon, which is also a positive move.

Yes, we said dancing elephants


'Dancing elephants' help chart prehistoric Canada

Imagine an ocean on the Prairies and mountains higher than the Himalayas in Ontario.

That's part of the picture unveiled by Lithoprobe, a 20-year examination of Canada's ancient geological history. Named for the probe of the lithosphere (the earth's outer shell) the project used 20-tonne trucks dubbed "dancing elephants" to generate some of its data.
"Dancing elephant" in action.

Since 1984, more than 800 university, government and industry scientists have been examining the movements of ancient continents, oceans and islands, piercing together the evidence to draw a map of Canada's origins.

Dig 'em up! Renewed pressure for full excavation of Viking site

THE ‘Save Viking Waterford Action Group’, have called on new Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, to make a commitment to the full excavation of the entire Woodstown Viking Site one of his first announcements in his new role.

The National Monuments Act 2004, drafted by the previous Minister, Martin Cullen, invests the Minister for the Environment with arbitrary authority over Ireland’s heritage.

The new act, the action group maintains, abolishes the democratic checks and balances which previously existed, meaning that Dick Roche now has sole authority over the future of the Woodstown Viking Site and other sites of crucial archaeological importance around the country.

Remains of ancient wall found at city site

THE remains of a medieval wall built to guard the city have been discovered on a building site.

Workers building dozens of flats on a site beside Old Fishmarket Close in the Cowgate have unearthed the one metre-high structure, which is thought to be part of the "King’s Wall".

Although historians are divided over the wall’s origins, it is believed that James II ordered the construction of the King’s Wall in 1450 as a defence against English forces.

But some experts claim the wall was actually built by English forces more than 100 years earlier when they occupied Edinburgh Castle around 1335.

Taking a pipi at a site Pipi shell may lead to ancient village site

A pipi shell midden at Karamea may conceal an early Polynesian village occupied for at least a century about 700 years ago, according to an initial finding by archaeologists.

"We believe the midden may be part of a site that is several hectares in size - it's a big site, a very big site," Otago University archaeology senior lecturer Richard Walter said yesterday.

The site, on the edge of Karamea township and the Karamea River estuary, 100km north of Westport, is under pasture and was an exciting find because of its age.

It suggested the coast had more people early in the history of New Zealand's settlement than first thought.

The site was also interesting because of its relationship to other known early settlements at Westport, 100km south, and at the Heaphy River mouth, about 25km north. Both were about 700 years old.

Following news courtesy of the EEF

Press report about the Egyptian Festival, held at St. Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church in East Brunswick:
http://www.thnt.com/thnt/story/0,21282,1069694,00.html

Press report: "Il Museo Egizio diventa Fondazione"
URL: http://www.porter.it/portale/articoli/articolo.asp?id_articolo=3920

-- "Turin Egyptian Museum: First in Italy to Become Foundation"
URL: http://snipurl.com/9lol

"The Misfortunes of Wenamun" (pMoscow 120)
-- Hieratic text (the beginning: 1,1-1,21): [Georg Möller, Hieratische Lesestücke für den akademischen Gebrauch, Zweites Heft: Literarische Texte des Neuen Reiches, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1927, p. 29]
URL: http://www.egiptologia.org/fuentes/papiros/moscu120/moscu120_g.gif
-- Hieroglyphic text based on LES, 61-76
URL: http://www.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/hieroglyphes/oun/
the same as pdf-file: 166 KB
URL: http://www.iut.univ-paris8.fr/~rosmord/hieroglyphes/oun.pdf
-- English translation [= Hans Goedicke, The Report of Wenamun, Baltimore / London, 1975, pp. 149-158]
URL: http://www.utexas.edu/courses/cc304c2/wenamun.html
-- English translation [= Lichtheim II, 224-239]
URL: http://members.tripod.com/~ib205/report.html

Ahmad bin Abubekr bin Wahshih - Ancient alphabets and hieroglyphic characters explained: with an account of the Egyptian priests, their classes, initiation, and sacrifices. English translation of Ibn Wahshiyya's book 'Kitab Shawq al-Mustaham', by Joseph Hammer, London, 1806. Arab and English text available in HTML format at:
http://www.blackcrescent.com/w2_HG_01.html

Digitized book from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France:
-- Émile Amélineau, Histoire des monastères de la Basse-Égypte. Monuments pour servir à l'histoire de l'Egypte chrétienne: vies des saints Paul, Antoine, Macaire, Maxime et Domèce, Jean le Nain, etc. Texte copte et traduction française, Ernest Leroux, Paris, 1894 (Annales du Musée Guimet, vol. 25). LXIII, 429 pp.
URL: http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-107943

Digitized book from the Lepsius project:
-- Georg Ebers, Richard Lepsius - Ein Lebensbild, Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, Leipzig, 1885. xi, 390 pp. pdf-file: 21.7 MB
URL: http://snipurl.com/9l11

The November/December 2004 issue of Archaeology Odyssey has several Egyptological features (Petrie's discovery of the Fayum Portraits, a review of Pascal Vernus' book "Affairs and Scandals in Ancient Egypt", etc.), but only the abstracts are online:
http://www.bib-arch.org/bswb_AO/indexAO.html

Online version of: Patrizia Piacentini, 'Wonderful things' on paper: the Egyptologist Victor Loret in the Valley of the Kings, in: Apollo Magazine, July 2003, pp. 1-6 [figs. omitted]
URL: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0PAL/is_497_158/ai_106732097


Special note!
Online version of: Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal [CARJ], vol. 55, issue 4 (October, 2004) "This issue ... is devoted entirely to paleoradiology ..." - Full text
available in HTML- or pdf-format.
TOC: http://www.cma.ca/index.cfm/ci_id/41681/la_id/1.htm
A section is devoted to the study of mummies:
-- Rethy K. Chhem, Pierre Schmit, Clément Fauré, Did Ramesses II really have ankylosing spondylitis? A reappraisal, in: CARJ, vol. 55 (4), pp. 211-217 (2004) -- see EEF News (320) of September 16, 2004
"The radiologic evidence does not support the claim that Ramesses II had ankylosing spondylitis. Our radiologic reappraisal suggests instead the diagnosis of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis. This new diagnosis needs to be validated by a computed tomographic scan of the mummy."
HTML: http://www.cma.ca/index.cfm/ci_id/41669/la_id/1.htm
pdf-file - 450 KB: http://snipurl.com/9l14
-- Frank J. Rühli, Rethy K. Chhem, Thomas Böni, Diagnostic paleoradiology of mummified tissue: interpretation and pitfalls, in: CARJ, vol. 55 (4), pp. 218-227 (2004)
"The purpose of this article is to review the role of diagnostic paleoradiology in mummy studies."
HTML: http://www.cma.ca/index.cfm/ci_id/41670/la_id/1.htm
pdf-file - 285 KB: http://snipurl.com/9l16
-- Janet C. Gardner, Greg Garvin, Andrew J. Nelson, Gian Vascotto, Gerald Conlogue, Paleoradiology in mummy studies: the Sulman Mummy Project, in: CARJ, vol. 55 (4), pp. 228-234 (2004)
"In this paper, we describe a previously unreported, ongoing and collaborative paleoradiologic project focused on an Egyptian mummy, involving researchers from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), St. Joseph's Health Care, Robarts Research Institute and the National Research Council of Canada's Virtual Environment Technologies Centre (VETC), London, Ont. This project mirrors the evolution
of paleoradiology in mummy studies, from basic plain film images to the latest 3-dimensional (3D) reconstructions based on computed tomography (CT)."
HTML: http://www.cma.ca/index.cfm/ci_id/41672/la_id/1.htm
pdf-file - 345 KB: http://snipurl.com/9l1b

Look, we have our own saints and everything

Patron saints of archaeology:

Pope Damasus I (ca. 306-384):

His pontificate suffered from the rise of Arianism, and from several schisms including break-away groups in Antioch, Constantinople, Sardinia, and Rome. However, it was during Damasus' reign that Christianity was declared the religion of the Roman state.

Patron of his secretary, Saint Jerome, commissioning him to make the translation of scripture now known as the Vulgate. Damasus restored catacombs, shrines, and the tombs of martyrs, and wrote poetry and metrical inscriptions about and dedicated to martyrs. They state that he would like to be buried in the catacombs with the early martyrs, but that the presence of one of his lowly status would profane such an august place. Ten of his letters, personal and pontifical, have survived.

St. Jerome (347-419):

Born to a rich pagan family, he led a misspent youth. Studied in Rome. Lawyer. Converted in theory, and baptised in 365, he began his study of theology, and had a true conversion. Monk. Lived for years as a hermit in the Syrian deserts. Reported to have drawn a thorn from a lion's paw; the animal stayed loyally at his side for years. Priest. Student of Saint Gregory of Nazianzen. Secretary to Pope Damasus I who commissioned him to revise the Latin text of the Bible. The result of his 30 years of work was the Vulgate translation, which is still in use. Friend and teacher of Saint Paula, Saint Marcella, and Saint Eustochium, an association that led to so much gossip, Jerome left Rome to return to the desert solitude. Lived his last 34 years in the Holy Land as a semi-recluse. Wrote translations of Origen, histories, biographies, and much more. Doctor of the Church, Father of the Church. Since his own time, he has been associated in the popular mind with scrolls, writing, cataloging, translating, etc. This led to those who work in such fields taking him as their patron - a man who knew their lives and problems.

St. Helen (250-330):

Converted to Christianity late in life. Married Constantius Chlorus, co-regent of the western Roman empire. Mother of Constantine the Great. Her husband put her aside for a second marriage with better political connections. On his death, her son ascended to the throne, brought her home, and treated her as royalty. She used her high position and wealth in the service of her religious enthusiasm, and helped build churches throughout the empire.

At the age of 80 she led a group to the Holy Land to search for the True Cross. She and her group unearthed three crosses in 326. At the suggestion of Saint Macarius of Jerusalem, she took them to a woman afflicated with an incurable disease, and had her touch each one. One of them immediately cured her, and it was pronounced the True Cross. She built a church on the spot where the cross was found, and sent pieces to Rome and Constantinople; the Feast of the Holy Cross on 14 September celebrates the event. Thus in art, she is usually depicted holding a wooden cross.

We here at ArchaeoBlog, while rather taking a liking to a fellow who is described as having a "misspent youth", still prefer Helen as our official patron saint. After all, she did fieldwork, conducted empirical tests on the efficacy of true-crossness, and sent samples back to the home office for curation, display, and storage.



And here she is after pondering Schiffer's latest tome:

Post-Pleistocene extinctions. . .again Extinct Giant Deer Survived Ice Age, Study Says

Saber-toothed cats, mastodons, giant sloths, woolly rhinos, and many other big, shaggy mammals are widely thought to have died out around the end of the last ice age, some 10,500 years ago.

More recently, however, evidence has emerged that at least two of the spectacular megafauna of the Pleistocene era (1.6 million to 10,000 years ago) clung on until recent times.

. . .

Now a new study, published tomorrow in the science journal Nature, suggests that another striking mammal, the Irish elk, likewise lived way beyond the last ice age.

Money quote: Writing independently in tomorrow's Nature, biologists John Pastor and Ron Moen state: "The [Irish elk] finding lends weight to the idea that there is no one explanation for the so-called Pleistocene extinctions."

Alongside climate fluctuations and vegetation changes, they say, human activity, competing species, and other ecological pressures need to be taken into account for each animal.

Lister said, "Whereas people have been looking for single blanket explanation to account for all these species going extinct, we're saying you've got a range of species with different ecologies and adaptations."

This is precisely what needs to be done. Detailed records for the distributions of animal and human populations need to be produced before a cause(s) can be assigned for the extinction of individual species or genus.

A mammoth excavation Lecture will detail archaeology dig in Woodburn (Free quick reg. required)

The history of the archaeological dig in Woodburn's Mammoth Park will be the topic of a program Saturday in the Woodburn Public Library. The Mammoth Park archaeological site was discovered in 1987 after utility crews found large bones while trenching the area at the eastern edge of Woodburn High School to install a sewer line.

Beth Walton, an archaeologist and a member of the Oregon Archaeological Society, will discuss how researchers and scientists began testing the site in 1996 and later confirmed their findings were numerous species of small animals from the Ice Age. Woodburn became the first to document these types of animals in the Pacific Northwest.

The free presentation begins at 1:30 p.m. in the children's area of the library at 270 Garfield St. For more information, call the library at 503-982-5252 or visit its Web site at www.ccrls.org/woodburn.

And a mammoth mystery Yakutsk find baffles archaeologists

Remains of an ancient mammal, supposedly of a newborn mammoth, have been unearthed in the Oimyakonsky region of Yakutia during planned excavations at one of the local gold mines.

According to the Mammoth Institute of Yakutia, the remains have been discovered at one of the gold mines "Volnik-terrace" situated within 2 km from the Oktybrskaya village of the Oimyakonsky region.

The skeleton was discovered by pure accident in the course of seasonal excavation works in the region. It has been successfully extracted from the ever-frozen soil by the "Kamazu" bulldozer. The upper part of the animal's head has been fractured, that is why it was quite difficult to tell from the start whether it's a rhinoceros or a mammoth.

The find appears quite odd however. For instance, neither the animal's head nor its body has fur. The bulldozer operator claims he smelled something burning while excavating the skeleton. However, no traces of burnt fur or bones have been found. And one more detail: according to the same man, when placed under the direct rays of the sun, the remains began bleeding, reports YACIA.

In the meantime, scientists are still trying to determine the animal's type. Yakutia's Mammoth Museum does not rule out the possibility that the skeleton is in fact of a newborn mammoth. In case the presumption proves to be true, perhaps its mother is buried somewhere next to him in the permafrost.

We have no idea what to make of this.

Hurricane archaeology Storms erase sands of time

To date, there have been no reports of remnants of any ancient civilizations unearthed along the shoreline, courtesy of Charley, Frances and Jeanne.

Atlantis, in other words, is still missing.

But like archaeologists gone wild, the recent hurricanes have done some heavy-duty digging hereabouts, turning large swaths of the beach into impromptu excavation sites.

In New Smyrna Beach, for example, the rusty skeleton of what seems to be a school bus is now free of the 10 or more feet of sand in which it lay hidden for who knows how long -- prompting the curious to contemplate what manner of early Floridian would have left it there in the first place. And all along what we still like to call the World's Most Famous Beach, newly revealed layers of old foundations -- some of which look, to the untrained eye, like the remains of temples from previous beach-worshipping civilizations -- serve as irrefutable evidence that modern "homo-vehicularis" (beach-driving man) was not the first hominid to get sand between his toes.

Breaking news Mexico Clears Wal-Mart Store Construction

Retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc. won a rare victory after Mexican officials and an international preservation group said no damage would be caused by building a discount store less than a mile from the ancient pyramids of Teotihuacan.

The announcement Wednesday by the State of Mexico and the Paris-based International Council On Monuments and Sites, Icomos, struck a blow to opponents who had vowed to block the store, claiming it would intrude upon and damage the archaeological site.

"The project in question does not damage the conservation of archaeological remains, nor the integrity, environmental or cultural values of the archaeological zone," according to the report by the Mexico chapter of Icomos.

Update on Port Angeles dig 14 skulls found in a pit at graving yard

LOWER ELWHA KLALLAM Tribal Chairwoman Frances G. Charles says a pit containing 14 human skulls has been uncovered at the graving yard site.

The discovery was made last week by archaeologists and tribal members working to complete an archaeological excavation at the waterfront property.

``The skulls were placed very carefully into a pit, and were all teenagers to young adults when buried,'' Charles said.

It is unknown if the skulls are male or female.

Fraud! Archaeologists find evidence of 300-year-old fraud

Evidence that one of the most powerful men in Scotland was stealing the country's money more than 300 years ago has been discovered at the site of the new Scottish Parliament. Archaeologists have found proof that the Third Earl of Lauderdale was melting down silver coins in his kitchen at Queensberry House in the 17th century.

In 1670, Lord Hatton, whose family name was Charles Maitland, was one of Scotland's most important men. He led a lavish lifestyle - with a stately home beside Holyrood in Edinburgh. His big brother effectively ran the country for Charles II. But all was not well - Lard Hatton was running out of cash.

Coffins shed light on Ancient Greeks

THE discovery of two large limestone coffins dating back 3,000 years could indicate that the ancient Greeks may have been more technologically advanced than previously thought, an archaeologist said today.

Each of the coffins, also known as a sarcophagus, was found in Ancient Corinth and dates back to 900 to 875 BC - a period known as the early Geometric period.

The name derives from the art of the period, mostly found on pots, with its characteristically linear designs and dots and lines forming zigzags and angles.

Also from Greece. . . Mersey archaeologist investigates lost society

AN ARCHAEOLOGIST from the University of Liverpool is uncovering the secrets of one of the world's oldest civilisations.

Dr Alan Greaves is looking at the people of the lost society of Ionia, which was in ancient Greece, now within the borders of Turkey.

He has been carrying out excavations in Turkey for the past decade and his findings have revealed new insights into the lives of the Ionian land workers. Previous studies have focused on Ionia's structures and literary texts, but little has been revealed about the day-to-day experiences of the Ionian people.

His work over the last decade has discovered the civilisation's structure and literature but little about the people's everyday lives, which is the subject of his latest work.

CSI: Toronto

Swansea skull centuries old

The mysterious skull that labourers unearthed near Swansea Town Hall did not belong to Mabel Crumback, to Marion McDowell or to any of the 1950s cold cases revived by west-end locals in recent months.

The case, it turns out, is much, much colder.

The skull belonged to an aboriginal man in his 20s who probably died from a serious infectious disease before Europeans arrived here, according to Kathy Gruspier, the forensic anthropologist who examined the skull for Ontario's chief coroner's office.

This is a lousy story Extinct humans left louse legacy

Some head lice infesting people today were probably spread to us thousands of years ago by an extinct species of early human, a genetics study reveals.

It shows that when our ancestors left Africa after 100,000 years ago, they made direct contact with tribes of "archaic" peoples, probably in Asia.

Lice could have jumped from them on to our ancestors during fights, sex, clothes-sharing or even cannibalism.

Details of the research appear in the open access journal Plos Biology.

We were going to use the "Of lice and men" line, but they beat us to it. Interesting study. Read the whole thing.

Another bizarre twist in the NAGPRA saga Compromise should
protect museum and Hawaiian sanctity

The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA, was aimed at returning human remains held in museums to the care of their Native American or Hawaiian descendants. Faced with a wholesale seizure of its inventory, Bishop Museum proposed that it be designated a native Hawaiian organization eligible to maintain possession of sacred and funerary objects.

The strategy seemed to be the only way to preserve the museum's precious collection of artifacts, and the museum's Hawaiian roots drew sympathy within the Interior Department. Craig Manson, assistant interior secretary for fish, wildlife and parks, said in a letter to Senator Inouye that his department "does not consider 'museum' and 'native Hawaiian organization' to be mutually exclusive categories."

Archaeologist plans ambitious survey of the Trans-Pecos

The Big Bend is 50 years behind the rest of Texas and the Southwest in terms of archaeological study, and many of the region’s sites are disappearing quickly.

Robert Mallouf, director of the Center for Big Bend Studies at Sul Ross State University since 1995 and a professional archaeologist, has an ambitious plan to document the region’s prehistory and history.

This sounds like a good project. It has specific goals, is region-wide in focus, and addresses real gaps in archaeological knowledge. Pay attention, dissertation-topic seekers.

Discovery of the oldest remains of a woman who died in childbirth

In ancient times, female death rates were particularly high and generally related to problems in maternity, such as complications during pregnancy, childbirth or the period of breast-feeding. However, in most cases this link has only been established from indirect data, such paleodemographic data and ethnographic references, or based on the poor health conditions normally attributed to ancient human groups.

. . .

The burial dates from the Argaric period, between 1,500 and 1,000 years BC, in the Bronze Age. Argaric culture funeral rituals were characterised by individual inhumations, most of them within the dwelling or its perimeter. This burial is within one of these dwellings. It is that of a young woman, about 25-26 years of age, with a foetus in the 37th to 39th week of gestation in the uterine cavity, in a crosswise position and with part of the right arm outside the uterus.

Sad news

Dominic Montserrat, who has died suddenly at his home in
London, was an extraordinarily gifted Egyptologist,
who combined his technical work as a scholar with an
immense talent for introducing his subject to a wider
audience. He went on from school to study Egyptology
at Durham, and subsequently took a PhD in Classics
from University College, London, specialising in
Egyptian, Coptic, Greek, and papyrology, to which he
added a variety of modern languages, including Arabic.
His first job was as a lecturer in Classics at Warwick
University, but his increasingly unreliable health,
led him to resign from Warwick and move to the Open
University where he worked in the research group
devising a course on Art and Society in the Later
Roman Empire, which allowed him to continue
professionally without having to meet a regular
schedule of undergraduate teaching. Like some other
haemophiliacs, his health was inadvertently undermined
by unscreened blood transfusions before the necessity
for screening was established, which gave him
hepatitis B and C. It became clear to him gradually
that he was living on borrowed time, and when he felt
he could not continue even in the relatively
unstructured environment of the Open University, he
resigned. In his brief working life, he was
nonetheless amazingly productive. As well as his
technical works on papyrology, which are of the first
quality, he wrote a number of radio plays and other
works exploring such topics as mediumistic or
fantastic evocations of ancient Egypt. His second
book, on the heretic pharaoh, Akhenaton: History,
Fantasy, and Ancient Egypt, explores these themes. He
also curated a well-received exhibition for the Petrie
Museum, Digging for Dreams. His last major project
was a series of documentaries for Channel Five,
co-presented with Miriam Cooke, The Egypt
Detectives, not merely a popularising rehash of the
already-known, but in fact, a series which presents
genuine and important discoveries in Egyptian
archaeology. With all that, he packed in an
extraordinary amount of life into a very few years
he travelled widely and adventurously, particularly in
the Middle East, with extraordinary bravery,
considering the risks which travel posed for a man for
whom a bruise could lead to months of continuous pain.
His health took a significant turn for the worse last
summer, and he had been aware since the New Year that
he had little future to look forward to. His funeral will be private.

We'd never heard of him, but share our condolences with his friends and loved ones.

Update I: On skull surgery Skull reveals how cranial surgery saved life of 11th-century peasant

ARCHAEOLOGISTS revealed new evidence yesterday which shows complicated cranial surgery was being performed in Britain 1,000 years ago.

An 11th-century skull, found at the abandoned ancient village of Wharram Percy in North Yorkshire, shows the scars of a near-fatal blow by a blunt weapon. But, thanks to a "life-saving" procedure performed at the time, the victim, aged about 40, survived the injury and made a good recovery.

Scientists say the man was a peasant who lived between 960AD and 1100AD in Wharram Percy. More than 700 skeletons were unearthed there during one of the longest digs in British archaeological history, between 1950 and 1990.

Analysis of the skull, found by English Heritage, shows he underwent a form of surgery known as trepanning. The procedure involved lifting a rectangular area of the scalp measuring 3.5in by 4in and scraping away at the skull beneath to remove bone fragments and relieve pressure on the brain.

Update II: Ghengis Khan's mausoleum Genghis Khan's mausoleum found

Archaeologists have unearthed the site of Genghis Khan's palace and believe the long-sought grave of the 13th century Mongolian warrior is somewhere nearby, the head of the excavation team says.

A Japanese and Mongolian research team found the complex on a grassy steppe 150 miles east of the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, said Shinpei Kato, professor emeritus at Tokyo's Kokugakuin University.

Genghis Khan (c. 1162-1227) united warring tribes to become leader of the Mongols in 1206. After his death, his descendants expanded his empire until it stretched from China to Hungary.

Genghis Khan built the palace in the simple shape of a square tent attached to wooden columns on the site at around 1200, Kato said.

And a picture!


Remote sensing update China employs high-tech to find out how much is left of the Great Wall

China has employed state-of-the-art technology to determine how much is left of the Great Wall and which parts belong to which provinces.

The remote sensor technology will enable the State Administration of Cultural Heritage to chart every inch of the 2,500 kilometers (1,560 miles) that still remains of the wall, the China Daily said.

Doesn't say what was used.

Something we had not heard Koum El-Hisn reveals new secrets of Ancient Egypt

A mission of the Faculty of Arts in Damanhur conducted excavations in the area of Koum El-Hisn in the governorate of Bahira. The team of archaeologists discovered a number of items which might change some of the concepts about the Old Kingdom.

The mission has found some clay vessels, stone tools, sharp metal tools, group tombs, and alabaster make-up vessels dating back to the Old Kingdom.

Dr. Hassan El-Sharief, head of the mission and Professor of Ancient History, declared that they have dug clay walls of a temple built 4,500 years ago. The walls are 80 CM high and 70 CM thick. The temple has an open yard and an offering table.

Dr. El-Sharief also mentioned that they have discovered a tomb for a mummified horse. This finding proved that the area was inhabited by the invading Hyksos who used to worship this particular animal.

The mission of Damanhur Faculty of Arts includes lecturers, demonstrators and post-graduate students.

This is a site we'd worked on. Did not know anything about Second Intermediate Period remains (Hyksos) although there are supposedly some there. The only temple we knew about was the New Kingdom one. Learn something new every day, I guess.

For more on Kom el-Hisn, look here.

Don't hate them because they were beautiful Iranian Women & Cosmetics in Ancient Iran

Based on recent excavations in northwestern Iran, archaeological now believe that eye makeup has been used Iran since about 4500 B.C. Other archaeological discoveries at Haft-Tappeh in Khuzestan Province indicate that women used to wear lipstick, rouge, and eye makeup in 2000 B.C. in Iran.

Achaemenid era religious texts say that the wives of the king spent a lot of time applying makeup and perfume before meeting the king. The ancient Greeks admired the Achaemenid era Persians for their custom of wearing makeup and attributed the origin of the use of cosmetics to the East.

Artist's conception of what an ancient Iranian woman may have looked like:



And now for something completely similar

Some exchanges from a recent set of postings to the EEF listserv:

I. I have a question regarding the garden scene from the tomb of 'Userhet' TT56. In the lower register of the scene one can see two gentlemen having their hair groomed.
Does this scene depicting the sheering or braiding of hair? An image of the scene is available online @ http://members.tripod.com/~ib205/nobles/userhat-56/image-6.gif [Edit: This link doesn't appear to work]

II. I don't know if this will be of any help, however, this is what i found concerning the tomb of Userhet, TT56.
http://www.osirisnet.net/tombes/nobles/ous56/e_user56.htm
I am not sure what the object between the two solders is...it appears to be a wine cup or perhaps a water bowl used to clean the razors used by barbers.

III. You can have a closer view of the scene here: http://www.osirisnet.net/tombes/nobles/ous56/e_user56.htm
To my knowledge, and according to Lise Manniche, this scene is unique in Egyptian art.

IV. In the scene the barbers are shaving the heads of some soldiers. In the image that I have put in http://www.egiptomania.com/tt56.jpg you can appreciate it better. [Edit: This is the best picture]

The object seem to be a recipient to deposit the hair (later use in wigs?).

V. The scene is usually referred to as the 'barbering scene.' This is a correct assumption as there are razors in the hands of the two barbers, and the inclusion of the bowl on the ground before one solider (being shaved) is clearly there to catch the lose hair being removed and/or provide water/shaving emulsion while the central barber performs his task.

As far as I know, the 'barber scene' is considered unique in Egyptian art, although the role of a barber and hairdresser are well attested, including an example from the tomb of Montuhotep I's two minor wives where a haidresser is represented on both sarcophagi attaching a curl to the body of the deceased (Green 2000: 74).

A full description of this scene, again with colour pictures, can be found
in

Hodel-Hoenes, S. 2000. _Life and Death in Ancient Egypt: Scene from Pirvate Tombs in New Kimgdom Thebes._ Ithaca: Cornell University Press. (See pp. 65-84 on the Tomb of Userhet; Fig. 43 is the barbering scene, with description on p.76)

Reference:

Green, L. 2000. Hairstyles. In Redford, D. B., Ed. _The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt._ 2: 73-76. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This seems positive Prestwich skeletons: memorial for Green Point

While archaeologists moved back on site to exhume skeletons from Prestwich Street this week, plans are afoot that could see a large section of Green Point become a heritage area with a museum housing the excavated human skeletons forming a central focus.

On Monday developers Ari Efstathiou and Andre van der Merwe, owners of the Prestwich Street site where the skeletons were found, said they had been in discussion with the city council and the SA Heritage Resources Agency (Sahra) about a proposal that would use a section of Green Point for a memorial to all the people who were buried at sites in the area.

Amateurs, unite! FAITHFUL AMATEURS

WHEN LATE September rolls around each year, freelance author Zach Kent of Passaic, N.J., gets excited about getting into a pit with his trusty trowel.

At the same time, in Dresden, Tenn., Jeff Higgs can hardly wait to trade his dental office for the great outdoors in Orange County.

And Mary Wyman, Nancy Wright and Cindy Reusche?

The residents of Washington, Philadelphia and Lake Forest, Ill., count the days until they can once again become volunteer archaeologists at Montpelier, the estate of President James Madison and his politically accomplished wife, Dolley.

A lot of excavation projects would be lost without volunteers. I believe we've posted on this subject before, but are far too lazy busy with important archaeological investigations to go look for said posts.

Here's something interesting: MEDICINE AND SURGERY IN ANCIENT EGYPT

Homer (c.700 BC) describes the Egyptian doctors in the Odyssey thus: 'For the fertile soil of Egypt is most rich in herbs, many of which are wholesome in solution, though many are poisonous. In medical knowledge the Egyptian leaves the rest of the world behind. He is a true son of Paeon the Healer'.

More on individual papyri here.

This. . . .is BNN Bulgarian Archaeologists Discover Ancient Greek Tombs

Archaeologists in Bulgaria’s historical Black Sea town of Nesebar discovered Monday two Ancient Greek tombs dated fourth and third century B.C., the Sofia-based Darik Radio reported.

The rectangular tombs were built of local limestone and contained fragments of bones, ceramic utensils and iron nails – indications that the dead have been buried in coffins.

The tombs seemed to have belonged to wealthy citizens of Messembria, a colony that ancient Greeks had established at the peninsula of today’s Nesebar, 436 kilometres (271 miles) east of Sofia.

Archaeologists have found gold decorations, ceramic and glass objects in three similar tombs uncovered during construction works in Nesebar last year.

That's the whole thing. Bit more here.

Experts Place Ancient Toolmakers on a Fast Track to Northern China (Free registration required)

Bands of early human ancestors became the first intercontinental migrants sometime before 1.75 million years ago. That was when they left their skulls and stone tools near the Black Sea in Georgia, the oldest clear evidence uncovered so far of an ancestral presence outside Africa.

Now a discovery of 1.66 million-year-old stone tools in northern China has produced the earliest evidence that some of these ancestors, probably the species Homo erectus, apparently dispersed across Asia at a relatively rapid clip and made a place for themselves in a wide range of environments.

Scientists report in the current issue of the journal Nature that these ancestors, referred to as hominids or hominins, were making and using "indisputable stone tools" at a lakeside site in upper Asia almost 340,000 years before any previously known settlement there.

Rescue archaeology in Dunwich Dig may unlock Dunwich secrets

ARCHAEOLOGISTS are hoping to carry out a major five-year dig at a nationally important historical site before it is lost to the sea.

They face a race against time to collect information about Greyfriars Priory at Dunwich before the site is washed away by coastal erosion.

Suffolk County Council is preparing a bid for a 90% grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to help cover the dig, which is expected to cost around £750,000.

The ambitious excavation would involve the complete excavation and salvage of buried historical artefacts – including uncovering 1,000 burials at the site.

And in related news: Time team race to save history from the waves

THE sea has shaped Scotland’s coastline and given her people an abundance of food, wealth and play. But it is also rapidly erasing the nation’s history.

Coastal erosion - made worse by global warming - threatens to destroy an estimated 12,000 of Scotland’s 35,000 sites of archaeological importance, some of them in months and years rather than decades and centuries.

Experts say that 500 of the sites are of national and even international importance and they are in a race against time to salvage what artefacts they can before the seas claim them forever.

The warning follows research by experts at St Andrews University and Historic Scotland, who said last night that the country had turned a blind eye to an impending cultural disaster.

OOOOoooo. . . Archeologists discover ruins of Genghis Khan mausoleum in the central areas of Mongolia

A Genghis Khan mausoleum has been discovered in the central areas of Mongolia by a joint Japanese-Mongolian archeological expedition, the press here reported on Tuesday.

The scientists hope the discovery will help them find a place where Genghis Khan was buried. Genghis Khan was the founder of the Mongol empire that was established at the beginning of the 13th century and that put a yoke on vast territories of Asia and Eastern Europe. Genghis Khan's grandson Khubilai Khan conquered China and became the first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty.

On numerous occasions, the finds corresponded to descriptions that are contained in ancient Chinese and Persian chronicles. This gives the scientists grounds to believe that the ruins they came across in Avraga area, 250 km east of Ulan Bator are really Genghis Khan's mausoleum. The archeologists found incense-burners with a representation of dragon that served as the symbol of the supreme ruler.

Genghis Khan's burial place was kept top secret so as to prevent the plunder of the tomb. The scientists, basing themselves on other precedents, believe that the burial place is within a radius of about 12 km from the mausoleum. Full-scale excavations are to be carried out in 2007.

That's the whole thing.

Trepidation by trepanning Medieval surgeons were advanced

Surgeons were carrying out complicated skull operations in medieval times, the remains of a body found at an archaeological dig show.

A skull belonging to a 40-year-old peasant man, who lived between 960 and 1100AD, is the firmest evidence yet of cranial surgery, say its discoverers.

The remains, found in Yorkshire, show the man survived an otherwise fatal blow to the head thanks to surgery.

Nearly 700 skeletons were unearthed by English Heritage at a site near Malton.

This is a fairly common find archaeologically. Ancient people knew a bit or two about what happens when you get clubbed in the head and that the brain is a fairly important organ. There is also evidence that many of the people survived for some time after the procedure. We'd provide some links, but we didn't find any particularly good ones.

SMUT! Pompeii's erotic murals closed for a year for renovations

A SERIES of erotic murals decorating a brothel in the buried city of Pompeii were closed off yesterday for a £250,000 makeover.

The paintings depict the services on offer in the Roman city before it was buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.

Souvenir stalls selling copies of the images do a brisk trade from the one million visitors a year who come to the town.

But now time has begun to tell on the fading images and the rooms of the Lupanare (Latin for brothel) are being closed for a year-long renovation project.

Some description of the murals here. Three of the murals are photographed here.

We'd provide more links but, you know, this is a family blog.

Update on post-Pleistocene extinctions Dog Extinctions Show Why Bigger Isn't Better

Fossils from extinct dogs show why bigger is not better -- giant meat-eating animals died out because they relied too heavily on hunting other big animals, scientists reported on Thursday.

Smaller, quicker carnivores could vary their diet more, hunting small rodents and mixing in berries, roots and other food sources, said Blaire van Valkenburgh and colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles.

But once a carnivore reached a certain size, it would spend more energy hunting than it would get from small prey, and had to rely on big game, they report in this week's issue of the journal Science. And that made them less adaptable.

"Among living meat eaters, almost all species larger than about 21 kg (45 pounds) prey on species as large or larger than themselves, whereas smaller carnivores can subsist on much smaller prey (such as invertebrates and rodents)," the researchers wrote.

Summary: Selection for individual traits and characteristics, or specialization, can be
immediately beneficial but detrimental to a clade in the long run. Van Valkenburgh et al. (p. 101) show that this likely happened to canids (the group that includes dogs) repeatedly during the past 50 million years, and perhaps to many large predators and mammals. Canid clades repeatedly show an increase in body size. Those clades that had the largest increase in body size and became specialized for attacking large prey, on the basis of teeth size and morphology, typically span only about 6 million years before becoming extinct, which is considerably less than for clades with smaller individuals and a more diverse diet.

Actual paper here. (subscription only)

Summary: They plotted an index score based on craniodental measurements which measure hypercarnivory against estimates of species duration and found that "none of the hypercarnivorous species (solid symbols) persisted for more than six million years, whereas some more omnivorous species (open symbols) endured for as much as 11 million years" concluding that large hypercarnivores tend to be more susceptible to extinction. The mechanism they suggest is that selection for large size and hypercarnivory locked them into a suite of specializations which make them more vulnerable to extinction than more generalized critters. This is a general characteristic of mammals known as Cope's Rule.

Update: Another paper on extinctions here. (Subscription only again) Summary:

One of the great debates about extinction is whether humans or climatic change caused the demise of the Pleistocene megafauna. Evidence from paleontology, climatology, archaeology, and ecology now supports the idea that humans contributed to extinction on some continents, but human hunting was not solely responsible for the pattern of extinction everywhere. Instead, evidence suggests that the intersection of human impacts with pronounced climatic change drove the precise timing and geography of extinction in the Northern Hemisphere. The story from the Southern Hemisphere is still unfolding. New evidence from Australia supports the view that humans helped cause extinctions there, but the correlation with climate is weak or contested. Firmer chronologies, more realistic ecological models, and regional paleoecological insights still are needed to understand details of the worldwide extinction pattern and the population dynamics of the species involved.

Abandonment archaeology The Jewish millionaire who surrendered to the Romans

Dozens of coins from the tenth Roman Legion, uncovered during the last excavation season at the Herodian palace in Ramat Hanadiv, offer some insight on the demise of the glamorous palace. Prof. Yizhar Hirschfeld, a Hebrew University archeologist who has been managing the excavations at the site since the 1980s, says that it is possible to learn from the presence of the coins that that the palace was abandoned during the Great Rebellion that started in 66 CE not far away from there, in Caesarea.

The findings at the site do not make it possible to determine whether the palace was captured by force or abandoned and then fell into Roman hands, says Hirschfeld. But they do say something about the haste of the residents as they left. Among other things found at the site were a gold earring and a gold clasp - jewels that even a person of means does not leave behind during a leisurely moving to another place.

This is a generalized interpretation of the mode of abandonment: valuable objects left behind are thought to indicate rapid abandonment, while areas left fairly clean or full of low-cost, low-value objects are presumed to indicate gradual or planned abandonment.

Note: Only IE seems to be working with BlogSpot today, rather than our usual Mozilla. This miffs us greatly as we find using Microsoft products to be the functional equivalent of repeatedly stabbing one's groin area with a sharp piece of obsidian.

So, go complain to these people.

Gobs of news today, so multiple posts will probably take place over the day. Third post is probably the most interesting.

They made an offer no one could refuse. . . ARCHAEOLOGY: MEDITERRANEAN ANCIENT HISTORY HAS SICILIAN BASE

The commercial and political history in the ancient Mediterranean area is documented in the relics that are spread generously around the Capo Molini seabed, which is just north of Catania, between Acitrezza e Acireale. The results of the excavation carried out this summer in that part of the sea, between the coast and the Cyclops Islands were being presented by Edoardo Tortorici, an archaeologist at the University of Catania. He was speaking at the International Under-Water Archaeological Conference being held in Aci Castello. He said, "The findings that have been studied show the origins of the commercial system. Over the course of more than a thousand years, this operated along Sicily's eastern coast, from the archaic era of maritime trafficking with the ancient Greek colonies (from the 6th to the 1st centuries B.C..) up to the beginning of the Medioeval period (7th century A.D.).

No paragraph breaks, difficult to read. Kind of interesting though.

Nice pot Archaeologist based in San Marcos unveils new discoveries in Israel

Dr. Randall Price of San Marcos is a co-pastor at Grace Bible Church, so on weeks that he preaches, like any other pastor, he prepares a sermon that will retell a piece of the biblical past. But this particular pastor does a lot more than narrate history. In fact, he creates it.

Price - arch- aeologist, theologian, pastor, professor, father and husband - has just returned from an excavation in Israel, and as he begins to tell of his latest discovery, you realize you're speaking to more than just an inspiring preacher, but a man at the forefront of theological discoveries.

Hmmmmmmm. . . . Discovery keeps human origin debate alive

For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake - bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men.

The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to fit: a mineral-darkened piece of brow ridge bone and a bit of jaw that didn't match any modern skulls.

But Solorzano found a perfect fit when he placed the brow against a model of the Old World's Tautavel Man - member of a species, Homo erectus, that many believe was an ancestor of modern homo sapiens.

The catch: Homo erectus is believed to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago - tens of thousands of years before men are believed to have reached the Americas.

And archaeologists have never found a trace of Homo erectus in the Americas.

Key sentence: Most frustrating for archaeologists, who are accustomed to fussing over the tiniest details, is that nobody knows quite where the bone came from or even when it was found."

We admit having never heard of this before. The sentence quoted above makes it well-nigh impossible to evaluate it.

And in related news. . . Finder of first Peking Man skull commemorated in Beijing

An exhibition is being held in Beijing to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pei Wenzhong,the discoverer of the first Peking Man skull.

The exhibition, which showcases Pei's life and achievements, began Friday and will last through the end of the year. This year is also the 75th anniversary of Pei's discovery.

Born in 1904 in north China's Hebei Province, Pei was a famous prehistory archaeologist and paleontologist and a founder of China's studies in Paleolithic archaeology.

Another lost city, found Remains of Sanish surfacing in dry Lake Sakakawea

The town of Sanish, flooded 50 years ago when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River to create Lake Sakakawea, has started to reappear as years of drought have lowered the lake.

Corps archaeologist Steve Gilbert said about one-third of the town is visible, though there is not much left but building foundations and rubble.

"But for some of the old-timers who may have lived here and are still alive ... they would have a pretty good idea of what they're looking at," he said.

The federal government bought out the town, and it was evacuated in 1953. The 1950 census said Sanish had 500 residents.

Gilbert said the remains of the town are on federal land, and it is a crime to take anything from the site.

That's the whole thing.

From Egypt to Peru, archaeologists are unearthing breweries from long ago

Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself. It's mentioned in Sumerian texts from more than 5,000 years ago. Starting in the 1950s, scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the impetus for the development of agriculture. Nearly every culture around the world has invented its own local concoction. Historically, brewing was a home-based operation, as part of the preparation of meals. From South America to the Middle East, beer production grew in scale with the rise of organized societies, scientists theorize, and later became primarily a function of the state. Beer was given to laborers or soldiers, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and drunk by politicians at state functions.

Almost all of what scientists know about beer's history, however, is based on written evidence and drawings, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Roman tablets, and European frescoes. Such works tell, for example, that thousands of years ago in Iraq, each city-state had its own brew master, says anthropologist James L. Phillips of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Archaeologists will date any old thing Marking time is a science at Berkeley center -- It devises ways to date nearly everything

When chemist Willard F. Libby discovered unexpected evidence that all the plants on Earth, both living and dead, were faintly radioactive, he opened an era of age-dating that has since seen extraordinary new techniques emerge to tell how old everything might be -- from mountains to fossil microbes.

Would you like to know how long ago the Pharaoh Sesostris III of Egypt sailed to the land of the dead aboard his funerary boat? Libby's "atomic clock" determined it almost exactly: It was 3,676 years ago, give or take a decade or two.

Do you want to know how long ago our earliest relatives on the human family tree lived in Africa's Great Rift Valley? Geochronologists in Berkeley can tell you that one branch of hominids inhabited a once-verdant site in now arid Ethiopia about 5.8 million years ago -- among the earliest prehuman remains discovered so far.

And then there's this: Arab scholar 'cracked Rosetta code' 800 years before the West

It is famed as a critical moment in code-breaking history. Using a piece of basalt carved with runes and words, scholars broke the secret of hieroglyphs, the written 'language' of the ancient Egyptians.

A baffling, opaque language had been made comprehensible, and the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilisations revealed - thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the analytic prowess of 18th and 19th century European scholars.

But now the supremacy of Western thinking has been challenged by a London researcher who claims that hieroglyphs had been decoded hundreds of years earlier - by an Arabic alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah.

'It has taken years of painstaking research to prove this,' said Dr Okasha El Daly, at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. 'I was convinced that Western scholars were not the first, and I have found evidence that shows Arabian scholars broke the code a thousand years ago.'

We vaguely remember linking, or at least reading, something on this a while back. If we recall correctly, there was some work on deciphering Egyptian glygphs by the Arab scholar noted in the piece, but the controversy regards how much of it he actually interpreted correctly. Did it lead to real translations, in other words. This was just posted on the EEF list and we will pass along any commentary on it.

Gobs of news today, so multiple posts will probably take place over the day. Third post is probably the most interesting.

They made an offer no one could refuse. . . ARCHAEOLOGY: MEDITERRANEAN ANCIENT HISTORY HAS SICILIAN BASE

The commercial and political history in the ancient Mediterranean area is documented in the relics that are spread generously around the Capo Molini seabed, which is just north of Catania, between Acitrezza e Acireale. The results of the excavation carried out this summer in that part of the sea, between the coast and the Cyclops Islands were being presented by Edoardo Tortorici, an archaeologist at the University of Catania. He was speaking at the International Under-Water Archaeological Conference being held in Aci Castello. He said, "The findings that have been studied show the origins of the commercial system. Over the course of more than a thousand years, this operated along Sicily's eastern coast, from the archaic era of maritime trafficking with the ancient Greek colonies (from the 6th to the 1st centuries B.C..) up to the beginning of the Medioeval period (7th century A.D.).

No paragraph breaks, difficult to read. Kind of interesting though.

Nice pot Archaeologist based in San Marcos unveils new discoveries in Israel

Dr. Randall Price of San Marcos is a co-pastor at Grace Bible Church, so on weeks that he preaches, like any other pastor, he prepares a sermon that will retell a piece of the biblical past. But this particular pastor does a lot more than narrate history. In fact, he creates it.

Price - arch- aeologist, theologian, pastor, professor, father and husband - has just returned from an excavation in Israel, and as he begins to tell of his latest discovery, you realize you're speaking to more than just an inspiring preacher, but a man at the forefront of theological discoveries.

Hmmmmmmm. . . . Discovery keeps human origin debate alive

For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake - bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men.

The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to fit: a mineral-darkened piece of brow ridge bone and a bit of jaw that didn't match any modern skulls.

But Solorzano found a perfect fit when he placed the brow against a model of the Old World's Tautavel Man - member of a species, Homo erectus, that many believe was an ancestor of modern homo sapiens.

The catch: Homo erectus is believed to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago - tens of thousands of years before men are believed to have reached the Americas.

And archaeologists have never found a trace of Homo erectus in the Americas.

Key sentence: Most frustrating for archaeologists, who are accustomed to fussing over the tiniest details, is that nobody knows quite where the bone came from or even when it was found."

We admit having never heard of this before. The sentence quoted above makes it well-nigh impossible to evaluate it.

And in related news. . . Finder of first Peking Man skull commemorated in Beijing

An exhibition is being held in Beijing to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pei Wenzhong,the discoverer of the first Peking Man skull.

The exhibition, which showcases Pei's life and achievements, began Friday and will last through the end of the year. This year is also the 75th anniversary of Pei's discovery.

Born in 1904 in north China's Hebei Province, Pei was a famous prehistory archaeologist and paleontologist and a founder of China's studies in Paleolithic archaeology.

Another lost city, found Remains of Sanish surfacing in dry Lake Sakakawea

The town of Sanish, flooded 50 years ago when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River to create Lake Sakakawea, has started to reappear as years of drought have lowered the lake.

Corps archaeologist Steve Gilbert said about one-third of the town is visible, though there is not much left but building foundations and rubble.

"But for some of the old-timers who may have lived here and are still alive ... they would have a pretty good idea of what they're looking at," he said.

The federal government bought out the town, and it was evacuated in 1953. The 1950 census said Sanish had 500 residents.

Gilbert said the remains of the town are on federal land, and it is a crime to take anything from the site.

That's the whole thing.

From Egypt to Peru, archaeologists are unearthing breweries from long ago

Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself. It's mentioned in Sumerian texts from more than 5,000 years ago. Starting in the 1950s, scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the impetus for the development of agriculture. Nearly every culture around the world has invented its own local concoction. Historically, brewing was a home-based operation, as part of the preparation of meals. From South America to the Middle East, beer production grew in scale with the rise of organized societies, scientists theorize, and later became primarily a function of the state. Beer was given to laborers or soldiers, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and drunk by politicians at state functions.

Almost all of what scientists know about beer's history, however, is based on written evidence and drawings, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Roman tablets, and European frescoes. Such works tell, for example, that thousands of years ago in Iraq, each city-state had its own brew master, says anthropologist James L. Phillips of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Archaeologists will date any old thing Marking time is a science at Berkeley center -- It devises ways to date nearly everything

When chemist Willard F. Libby discovered unexpected evidence that all the plants on Earth, both living and dead, were faintly radioactive, he opened an era of age-dating that has since seen extraordinary new techniques emerge to tell how old everything might be -- from mountains to fossil microbes.

Would you like to know how long ago the Pharaoh Sesostris III of Egypt sailed to the land of the dead aboard his funerary boat? Libby's "atomic clock" determined it almost exactly: It was 3,676 years ago, give or take a decade or two.

Do you want to know how long ago our earliest relatives on the human family tree lived in Africa's Great Rift Valley? Geochronologists in Berkeley can tell you that one branch of hominids inhabited a once-verdant site in now arid Ethiopia about 5.8 million years ago -- among the earliest prehuman remains discovered so far.

And then there's this: Arab scholar 'cracked Rosetta code' 800 years before the West

It is famed as a critical moment in code-breaking history. Using a piece of basalt carved with runes and words, scholars broke the secret of hieroglyphs, the written 'language' of the ancient Egyptians.

A baffling, opaque language had been made comprehensible, and the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilisations revealed - thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the analytic prowess of 18th and 19th century European scholars.

But now the supremacy of Western thinking has been challenged by a London researcher who claims that hieroglyphs had been decoded hundreds of years earlier - by an Arabic alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah.

'It has taken years of painstaking research to prove this,' said Dr Okasha El Daly, at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. 'I was convinced that Western scholars were not the first, and I have found evidence that shows Arabian scholars broke the code a thousand years ago.'

We vaguely remember linking, or at least reading, something on this a while back. If we recall correctly, there was some work on deciphering Egyptian glygphs by the Arab scholar noted in the piece, but the controversy regards how much of it he actually interpreted correctly. Did it lead to real translations, in other words. This was just posted on the EEF list and we will pass along any commentary on it.

Gobs of news today, so multiple posts will probably take place over the day. Third post is probably the most interesting.

They made an offer no one could refuse. . . ARCHAEOLOGY: MEDITERRANEAN ANCIENT HISTORY HAS SICILIAN BASE

The commercial and political history in the ancient Mediterranean area is documented in the relics that are spread generously around the Capo Molini seabed, which is just north of Catania, between Acitrezza e Acireale. The results of the excavation carried out this summer in that part of the sea, between the coast and the Cyclops Islands were being presented by Edoardo Tortorici, an archaeologist at the University of Catania. He was speaking at the International Under-Water Archaeological Conference being held in Aci Castello. He said, "The findings that have been studied show the origins of the commercial system. Over the course of more than a thousand years, this operated along Sicily's eastern coast, from the archaic era of maritime trafficking with the ancient Greek colonies (from the 6th to the 1st centuries B.C..) up to the beginning of the Medioeval period (7th century A.D.).

No paragraph breaks, difficult to read. Kind of interesting though.

Nice pot Archaeologist based in San Marcos unveils new discoveries in Israel

Dr. Randall Price of San Marcos is a co-pastor at Grace Bible Church, so on weeks that he preaches, like any other pastor, he prepares a sermon that will retell a piece of the biblical past. But this particular pastor does a lot more than narrate history. In fact, he creates it.

Price - arch- aeologist, theologian, pastor, professor, father and husband - has just returned from an excavation in Israel, and as he begins to tell of his latest discovery, you realize you're speaking to more than just an inspiring preacher, but a man at the forefront of theological discoveries.

Hmmmmmmm. . . . Discovery keeps human origin debate alive

For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake - bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men.

The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to fit: a mineral-darkened piece of brow ridge bone and a bit of jaw that didn't match any modern skulls.

But Solorzano found a perfect fit when he placed the brow against a model of the Old World's Tautavel Man - member of a species, Homo erectus, that many believe was an ancestor of modern homo sapiens.

The catch: Homo erectus is believed to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago - tens of thousands of years before men are believed to have reached the Americas.

And archaeologists have never found a trace of Homo erectus in the Americas.

Key sentence: Most frustrating for archaeologists, who are accustomed to fussing over the tiniest details, is that nobody knows quite where the bone came from or even when it was found."

We admit having never heard of this before. The sentence quoted above makes it well-nigh impossible to evaluate it.

And in related news. . . Finder of first Peking Man skull commemorated in Beijing

An exhibition is being held in Beijing to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pei Wenzhong,the discoverer of the first Peking Man skull.

The exhibition, which showcases Pei's life and achievements, began Friday and will last through the end of the year. This year is also the 75th anniversary of Pei's discovery.

Born in 1904 in north China's Hebei Province, Pei was a famous prehistory archaeologist and paleontologist and a founder of China's studies in Paleolithic archaeology.

Another lost city, found Remains of Sanish surfacing in dry Lake Sakakawea

The town of Sanish, flooded 50 years ago when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River to create Lake Sakakawea, has started to reappear as years of drought have lowered the lake.

Corps archaeologist Steve Gilbert said about one-third of the town is visible, though there is not much left but building foundations and rubble.

"But for some of the old-timers who may have lived here and are still alive ... they would have a pretty good idea of what they're looking at," he said.

The federal government bought out the town, and it was evacuated in 1953. The 1950 census said Sanish had 500 residents.

Gilbert said the remains of the town are on federal land, and it is a crime to take anything from the site.

That's the whole thing.

From Egypt to Peru, archaeologists are unearthing breweries from long ago

Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself. It's mentioned in Sumerian texts from more than 5,000 years ago. Starting in the 1950s, scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the impetus for the development of agriculture. Nearly every culture around the world has invented its own local concoction. Historically, brewing was a home-based operation, as part of the preparation of meals. From South America to the Middle East, beer production grew in scale with the rise of organized societies, scientists theorize, and later became primarily a function of the state. Beer was given to laborers or soldiers, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and drunk by politicians at state functions.

Almost all of what scientists know about beer's history, however, is based on written evidence and drawings, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Roman tablets, and European frescoes. Such works tell, for example, that thousands of years ago in Iraq, each city-state had its own brew master, says anthropologist James L. Phillips of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Archaeologists will date any old thing Marking time is a science at Berkeley center -- It devises ways to date nearly everything

When chemist Willard F. Libby discovered unexpected evidence that all the plants on Earth, both living and dead, were faintly radioactive, he opened an era of age-dating that has since seen extraordinary new techniques emerge to tell how old everything might be -- from mountains to fossil microbes.

Would you like to know how long ago the Pharaoh Sesostris III of Egypt sailed to the land of the dead aboard his funerary boat? Libby's "atomic clock" determined it almost exactly: It was 3,676 years ago, give or take a decade or two.

Do you want to know how long ago our earliest relatives on the human family tree lived in Africa's Great Rift Valley? Geochronologists in Berkeley can tell you that one branch of hominids inhabited a once-verdant site in now arid Ethiopia about 5.8 million years ago -- among the earliest prehuman remains discovered so far.

And then there's this: Arab scholar 'cracked Rosetta code' 800 years before the West

It is famed as a critical moment in code-breaking history. Using a piece of basalt carved with runes and words, scholars broke the secret of hieroglyphs, the written 'language' of the ancient Egyptians.

A baffling, opaque language had been made comprehensible, and the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilisations revealed - thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the analytic prowess of 18th and 19th century European scholars.

But now the supremacy of Western thinking has been challenged by a London researcher who claims that hieroglyphs had been decoded hundreds of years earlier - by an Arabic alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah.

'It has taken years of painstaking research to prove this,' said Dr Okasha El Daly, at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. 'I was convinced that Western scholars were not the first, and I have found evidence that shows Arabian scholars broke the code a thousand years ago.'

We vaguely remember linking, or at least reading, something on this a while back. If we recall correctly, there was some work on deciphering Egyptian glygphs by the Arab scholar noted in the piece, but the controversy regards how much of it he actually interpreted correctly. Did it lead to real translations, in other words. This was just posted on the EEF list and we will pass along any commentary on it.

Gobs of news today, so multiple posts will probably take place over the day. Third post is probably the most interesting.

They made an offer no one could refuse. . . ARCHAEOLOGY: MEDITERRANEAN ANCIENT HISTORY HAS SICILIAN BASE

The commercial and political history in the ancient Mediterranean area is documented in the relics that are spread generously around the Capo Molini seabed, which is just north of Catania, between Acitrezza e Acireale. The results of the excavation carried out this summer in that part of the sea, between the coast and the Cyclops Islands were being presented by Edoardo Tortorici, an archaeologist at the University of Catania. He was speaking at the International Under-Water Archaeological Conference being held in Aci Castello. He said, "The findings that have been studied show the origins of the commercial system. Over the course of more than a thousand years, this operated along Sicily's eastern coast, from the archaic era of maritime trafficking with the ancient Greek colonies (from the 6th to the 1st centuries B.C..) up to the beginning of the Medioeval period (7th century A.D.).

No paragraph breaks, difficult to read. Kind of interesting though.

Nice pot Archaeologist based in San Marcos unveils new discoveries in Israel

Dr. Randall Price of San Marcos is a co-pastor at Grace Bible Church, so on weeks that he preaches, like any other pastor, he prepares a sermon that will retell a piece of the biblical past. But this particular pastor does a lot more than narrate history. In fact, he creates it.

Price - arch- aeologist, theologian, pastor, professor, father and husband - has just returned from an excavation in Israel, and as he begins to tell of his latest discovery, you realize you're speaking to more than just an inspiring preacher, but a man at the forefront of theological discoveries.

Hmmmmmmm. . . . Discovery keeps human origin debate alive

For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake - bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men.

The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to fit: a mineral-darkened piece of brow ridge bone and a bit of jaw that didn't match any modern skulls.

But Solorzano found a perfect fit when he placed the brow against a model of the Old World's Tautavel Man - member of a species, Homo erectus, that many believe was an ancestor of modern homo sapiens.

The catch: Homo erectus is believed to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago - tens of thousands of years before men are believed to have reached the Americas.

And archaeologists have never found a trace of Homo erectus in the Americas.

Key sentence: Most frustrating for archaeologists, who are accustomed to fussing over the tiniest details, is that nobody knows quite where the bone came from or even when it was found."

We admit having never heard of this before. The sentence quoted above makes it well-nigh impossible to evaluate it.

And in related news. . . Finder of first Peking Man skull commemorated in Beijing

An exhibition is being held in Beijing to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pei Wenzhong,the discoverer of the first Peking Man skull.

The exhibition, which showcases Pei's life and achievements, began Friday and will last through the end of the year. This year is also the 75th anniversary of Pei's discovery.

Born in 1904 in north China's Hebei Province, Pei was a famous prehistory archaeologist and paleontologist and a founder of China's studies in Paleolithic archaeology.

Another lost city, found Remains of Sanish surfacing in dry Lake Sakakawea

The town of Sanish, flooded 50 years ago when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River to create Lake Sakakawea, has started to reappear as years of drought have lowered the lake.

Corps archaeologist Steve Gilbert said about one-third of the town is visible, though there is not much left but building foundations and rubble.

"But for some of the old-timers who may have lived here and are still alive ... they would have a pretty good idea of what they're looking at," he said.

The federal government bought out the town, and it was evacuated in 1953. The 1950 census said Sanish had 500 residents.

Gilbert said the remains of the town are on federal land, and it is a crime to take anything from the site.

That's the whole thing.

From Egypt to Peru, archaeologists are unearthing breweries from long ago

Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself. It's mentioned in Sumerian texts from more than 5,000 years ago. Starting in the 1950s, scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the impetus for the development of agriculture. Nearly every culture around the world has invented its own local concoction. Historically, brewing was a home-based operation, as part of the preparation of meals. From South America to the Middle East, beer production grew in scale with the rise of organized societies, scientists theorize, and later became primarily a function of the state. Beer was given to laborers or soldiers, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and drunk by politicians at state functions.

Almost all of what scientists know about beer's history, however, is based on written evidence and drawings, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Roman tablets, and European frescoes. Such works tell, for example, that thousands of years ago in Iraq, each city-state had its own brew master, says anthropologist James L. Phillips of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Archaeologists will date any old thing Marking time is a science at Berkeley center -- It devises ways to date nearly everything

When chemist Willard F. Libby discovered unexpected evidence that all the plants on Earth, both living and dead, were faintly radioactive, he opened an era of age-dating that has since seen extraordinary new techniques emerge to tell how old everything might be -- from mountains to fossil microbes.

Would you like to know how long ago the Pharaoh Sesostris III of Egypt sailed to the land of the dead aboard his funerary boat? Libby's "atomic clock" determined it almost exactly: It was 3,676 years ago, give or take a decade or two.

Do you want to know how long ago our earliest relatives on the human family tree lived in Africa's Great Rift Valley? Geochronologists in Berkeley can tell you that one branch of hominids inhabited a once-verdant site in now arid Ethiopia about 5.8 million years ago -- among the earliest prehuman remains discovered so far.

And then there's this: Arab scholar 'cracked Rosetta code' 800 years before the West

It is famed as a critical moment in code-breaking history. Using a piece of basalt carved with runes and words, scholars broke the secret of hieroglyphs, the written 'language' of the ancient Egyptians.

A baffling, opaque language had been made comprehensible, and the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilisations revealed - thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the analytic prowess of 18th and 19th century European scholars.

But now the supremacy of Western thinking has been challenged by a London researcher who claims that hieroglyphs had been decoded hundreds of years earlier - by an Arabic alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah.

'It has taken years of painstaking research to prove this,' said Dr Okasha El Daly, at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. 'I was convinced that Western scholars were not the first, and I have found evidence that shows Arabian scholars broke the code a thousand years ago.'

We vaguely remember linking, or at least reading, something on this a while back. If we recall correctly, there was some work on deciphering Egyptian glygphs by the Arab scholar noted in the piece, but the controversy regards how much of it he actually interpreted correctly. Did it lead to real translations, in other words. This was just posted on the EEF list and we will pass along any commentary on it.

Gobs of news today, so multiple posts will probably take place over the day. Third post is probably the most interesting.

They made an offer no one could refuse. . . ARCHAEOLOGY: MEDITERRANEAN ANCIENT HISTORY HAS SICILIAN BASE

The commercial and political history in the ancient Mediterranean area is documented in the relics that are spread generously around the Capo Molini seabed, which is just north of Catania, between Acitrezza e Acireale. The results of the excavation carried out this summer in that part of the sea, between the coast and the Cyclops Islands were being presented by Edoardo Tortorici, an archaeologist at the University of Catania. He was speaking at the International Under-Water Archaeological Conference being held in Aci Castello. He said, "The findings that have been studied show the origins of the commercial system. Over the course of more than a thousand years, this operated along Sicily's eastern coast, from the archaic era of maritime trafficking with the ancient Greek colonies (from the 6th to the 1st centuries B.C..) up to the beginning of the Medioeval period (7th century A.D.).

No paragraph breaks, difficult to read. Kind of interesting though.

Nice pot Archaeologist based in San Marcos unveils new discoveries in Israel

Dr. Randall Price of San Marcos is a co-pastor at Grace Bible Church, so on weeks that he preaches, like any other pastor, he prepares a sermon that will retell a piece of the biblical past. But this particular pastor does a lot more than narrate history. In fact, he creates it.

Price - arch- aeologist, theologian, pastor, professor, father and husband - has just returned from an excavation in Israel, and as he begins to tell of his latest discovery, you realize you're speaking to more than just an inspiring preacher, but a man at the forefront of theological discoveries.

Hmmmmmmm. . . . Discovery keeps human origin debate alive

For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake - bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men.

The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to fit: a mineral-darkened piece of brow ridge bone and a bit of jaw that didn't match any modern skulls.

But Solorzano found a perfect fit when he placed the brow against a model of the Old World's Tautavel Man - member of a species, Homo erectus, that many believe was an ancestor of modern homo sapiens.

The catch: Homo erectus is believed to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago - tens of thousands of years before men are believed to have reached the Americas.

And archaeologists have never found a trace of Homo erectus in the Americas.

Key sentence: Most frustrating for archaeologists, who are accustomed to fussing over the tiniest details, is that nobody knows quite where the bone came from or even when it was found."

We admit having never heard of this before. The sentence quoted above makes it well-nigh impossible to evaluate it.

And in related news. . . Finder of first Peking Man skull commemorated in Beijing

An exhibition is being held in Beijing to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pei Wenzhong,the discoverer of the first Peking Man skull.

The exhibition, which showcases Pei's life and achievements, began Friday and will last through the end of the year. This year is also the 75th anniversary of Pei's discovery.

Born in 1904 in north China's Hebei Province, Pei was a famous prehistory archaeologist and paleontologist and a founder of China's studies in Paleolithic archaeology.

Another lost city, found Remains of Sanish surfacing in dry Lake Sakakawea

The town of Sanish, flooded 50 years ago when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River to create Lake Sakakawea, has started to reappear as years of drought have lowered the lake.

Corps archaeologist Steve Gilbert said about one-third of the town is visible, though there is not much left but building foundations and rubble.

"But for some of the old-timers who may have lived here and are still alive ... they would have a pretty good idea of what they're looking at," he said.

The federal government bought out the town, and it was evacuated in 1953. The 1950 census said Sanish had 500 residents.

Gilbert said the remains of the town are on federal land, and it is a crime to take anything from the site.

That's the whole thing.

From Egypt to Peru, archaeologists are unearthing breweries from long ago

Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself. It's mentioned in Sumerian texts from more than 5,000 years ago. Starting in the 1950s, scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the impetus for the development of agriculture. Nearly every culture around the world has invented its own local concoction. Historically, brewing was a home-based operation, as part of the preparation of meals. From South America to the Middle East, beer production grew in scale with the rise of organized societies, scientists theorize, and later became primarily a function of the state. Beer was given to laborers or soldiers, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and drunk by politicians at state functions.

Almost all of what scientists know about beer's history, however, is based on written evidence and drawings, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Roman tablets, and European frescoes. Such works tell, for example, that thousands of years ago in Iraq, each city-state had its own brew master, says anthropologist James L. Phillips of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Archaeologists will date any old thing Marking time is a science at Berkeley center -- It devises ways to date nearly everything

When chemist Willard F. Libby discovered unexpected evidence that all the plants on Earth, both living and dead, were faintly radioactive, he opened an era of age-dating that has since seen extraordinary new techniques emerge to tell how old everything might be -- from mountains to fossil microbes.

Would you like to know how long ago the Pharaoh Sesostris III of Egypt sailed to the land of the dead aboard his funerary boat? Libby's "atomic clock" determined it almost exactly: It was 3,676 years ago, give or take a decade or two.

Do you want to know how long ago our earliest relatives on the human family tree lived in Africa's Great Rift Valley? Geochronologists in Berkeley can tell you that one branch of hominids inhabited a once-verdant site in now arid Ethiopia about 5.8 million years ago -- among the earliest prehuman remains discovered so far.

And then there's this: Arab scholar 'cracked Rosetta code' 800 years before the West

It is famed as a critical moment in code-breaking history. Using a piece of basalt carved with runes and words, scholars broke the secret of hieroglyphs, the written 'language' of the ancient Egyptians.

A baffling, opaque language had been made comprehensible, and the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilisations revealed - thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the analytic prowess of 18th and 19th century European scholars.

But now the supremacy of Western thinking has been challenged by a London researcher who claims that hieroglyphs had been decoded hundreds of years earlier - by an Arabic alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah.

'It has taken years of painstaking research to prove this,' said Dr Okasha El Daly, at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. 'I was convinced that Western scholars were not the first, and I have found evidence that shows Arabian scholars broke the code a thousand years ago.'

We vaguely remember linking, or at least reading, something on this a while back. If we recall correctly, there was some work on deciphering Egyptian glygphs by the Arab scholar noted in the piece, but the controversy regards how much of it he actually interpreted correctly. Did it lead to real translations, in other words. This was just posted on the EEF list and we will pass along any commentary on it.

Gobs of news today, so multiple posts will probably take place over the day. Third post is probably the most interesting.

They made an offer no one could refuse. . . ARCHAEOLOGY: MEDITERRANEAN ANCIENT HISTORY HAS SICILIAN BASE

The commercial and political history in the ancient Mediterranean area is documented in the relics that are spread generously around the Capo Molini seabed, which is just north of Catania, between Acitrezza e Acireale. The results of the excavation carried out this summer in that part of the sea, between the coast and the Cyclops Islands were being presented by Edoardo Tortorici, an archaeologist at the University of Catania. He was speaking at the International Under-Water Archaeological Conference being held in Aci Castello. He said, "The findings that have been studied show the origins of the commercial system. Over the course of more than a thousand years, this operated along Sicily's eastern coast, from the archaic era of maritime trafficking with the ancient Greek colonies (from the 6th to the 1st centuries B.C..) up to the beginning of the Medioeval period (7th century A.D.).

No paragraph breaks, difficult to read. Kind of interesting though.

Nice pot Archaeologist based in San Marcos unveils new discoveries in Israel

Dr. Randall Price of San Marcos is a co-pastor at Grace Bible Church, so on weeks that he preaches, like any other pastor, he prepares a sermon that will retell a piece of the biblical past. But this particular pastor does a lot more than narrate history. In fact, he creates it.

Price - arch- aeologist, theologian, pastor, professor, father and husband - has just returned from an excavation in Israel, and as he begins to tell of his latest discovery, you realize you're speaking to more than just an inspiring preacher, but a man at the forefront of theological discoveries.

Hmmmmmmm. . . . Discovery keeps human origin debate alive

For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake - bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men.

The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to fit: a mineral-darkened piece of brow ridge bone and a bit of jaw that didn't match any modern skulls.

But Solorzano found a perfect fit when he placed the brow against a model of the Old World's Tautavel Man - member of a species, Homo erectus, that many believe was an ancestor of modern homo sapiens.

The catch: Homo erectus is believed to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago - tens of thousands of years before men are believed to have reached the Americas.

And archaeologists have never found a trace of Homo erectus in the Americas.

Key sentence: Most frustrating for archaeologists, who are accustomed to fussing over the tiniest details, is that nobody knows quite where the bone came from or even when it was found."

We admit having never heard of this before. The sentence quoted above makes it well-nigh impossible to evaluate it.

And in related news. . . Finder of first Peking Man skull commemorated in Beijing

An exhibition is being held in Beijing to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pei Wenzhong,the discoverer of the first Peking Man skull.

The exhibition, which showcases Pei's life and achievements, began Friday and will last through the end of the year. This year is also the 75th anniversary of Pei's discovery.

Born in 1904 in north China's Hebei Province, Pei was a famous prehistory archaeologist and paleontologist and a founder of China's studies in Paleolithic archaeology.

Another lost city, found Remains of Sanish surfacing in dry Lake Sakakawea

The town of Sanish, flooded 50 years ago when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River to create Lake Sakakawea, has started to reappear as years of drought have lowered the lake.

Corps archaeologist Steve Gilbert said about one-third of the town is visible, though there is not much left but building foundations and rubble.

"But for some of the old-timers who may have lived here and are still alive ... they would have a pretty good idea of what they're looking at," he said.

The federal government bought out the town, and it was evacuated in 1953. The 1950 census said Sanish had 500 residents.

Gilbert said the remains of the town are on federal land, and it is a crime to take anything from the site.

That's the whole thing.

From Egypt to Peru, archaeologists are unearthing breweries from long ago

Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself. It's mentioned in Sumerian texts from more than 5,000 years ago. Starting in the 1950s, scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the impetus for the development of agriculture. Nearly every culture around the world has invented its own local concoction. Historically, brewing was a home-based operation, as part of the preparation of meals. From South America to the Middle East, beer production grew in scale with the rise of organized societies, scientists theorize, and later became primarily a function of the state. Beer was given to laborers or soldiers, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and drunk by politicians at state functions.

Almost all of what scientists know about beer's history, however, is based on written evidence and drawings, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Roman tablets, and European frescoes. Such works tell, for example, that thousands of years ago in Iraq, each city-state had its own brew master, says anthropologist James L. Phillips of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Archaeologists will date any old thing Marking time is a science at Berkeley center -- It devises ways to date nearly everything

When chemist Willard F. Libby discovered unexpected evidence that all the plants on Earth, both living and dead, were faintly radioactive, he opened an era of age-dating that has since seen extraordinary new techniques emerge to tell how old everything might be -- from mountains to fossil microbes.

Would you like to know how long ago the Pharaoh Sesostris III of Egypt sailed to the land of the dead aboard his funerary boat? Libby's "atomic clock" determined it almost exactly: It was 3,676 years ago, give or take a decade or two.

Do you want to know how long ago our earliest relatives on the human family tree lived in Africa's Great Rift Valley? Geochronologists in Berkeley can tell you that one branch of hominids inhabited a once-verdant site in now arid Ethiopia about 5.8 million years ago -- among the earliest prehuman remains discovered so far.

And then there's this: Arab scholar 'cracked Rosetta code' 800 years before the West

It is famed as a critical moment in code-breaking history. Using a piece of basalt carved with runes and words, scholars broke the secret of hieroglyphs, the written 'language' of the ancient Egyptians.

A baffling, opaque language had been made comprehensible, and the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilisations revealed - thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the analytic prowess of 18th and 19th century European scholars.

But now the supremacy of Western thinking has been challenged by a London researcher who claims that hieroglyphs had been decoded hundreds of years earlier - by an Arabic alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah.

'It has taken years of painstaking research to prove this,' said Dr Okasha El Daly, at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. 'I was convinced that Western scholars were not the first, and I have found evidence that shows Arabian scholars broke the code a thousand years ago.'

We vaguely remember linking, or at least reading, something on this a while back. If we recall correctly, there was some work on deciphering Egyptian glygphs by the Arab scholar noted in the piece, but the controversy regards how much of it he actually interpreted correctly. Did it lead to real translations, in other words. This was just posted on the EEF list and we will pass along any commentary on it.

Gobs of news today, so multiple posts will probably take place over the day. Third post is probably the most interesting.

They made an offer no one could refuse. . . ARCHAEOLOGY: MEDITERRANEAN ANCIENT HISTORY HAS SICILIAN BASE

The commercial and political history in the ancient Mediterranean area is documented in the relics that are spread generously around the Capo Molini seabed, which is just north of Catania, between Acitrezza e Acireale. The results of the excavation carried out this summer in that part of the sea, between the coast and the Cyclops Islands were being presented by Edoardo Tortorici, an archaeologist at the University of Catania. He was speaking at the International Under-Water Archaeological Conference being held in Aci Castello. He said, "The findings that have been studied show the origins of the commercial system. Over the course of more than a thousand years, this operated along Sicily's eastern coast, from the archaic era of maritime trafficking with the ancient Greek colonies (from the 6th to the 1st centuries B.C..) up to the beginning of the Medioeval period (7th century A.D.).

No paragraph breaks, difficult to read. Kind of interesting though.

Nice pot Archaeologist based in San Marcos unveils new discoveries in Israel

Dr. Randall Price of San Marcos is a co-pastor at Grace Bible Church, so on weeks that he preaches, like any other pastor, he prepares a sermon that will retell a piece of the biblical past. But this particular pastor does a lot more than narrate history. In fact, he creates it.

Price - arch- aeologist, theologian, pastor, professor, father and husband - has just returned from an excavation in Israel, and as he begins to tell of his latest discovery, you realize you're speaking to more than just an inspiring preacher, but a man at the forefront of theological discoveries.

Hmmmmmmm. . . . Discovery keeps human origin debate alive

For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake - bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men.

The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to fit: a mineral-darkened piece of brow ridge bone and a bit of jaw that didn't match any modern skulls.

But Solorzano found a perfect fit when he placed the brow against a model of the Old World's Tautavel Man - member of a species, Homo erectus, that many believe was an ancestor of modern homo sapiens.

The catch: Homo erectus is believed to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago - tens of thousands of years before men are believed to have reached the Americas.

And archaeologists have never found a trace of Homo erectus in the Americas.

Key sentence: Most frustrating for archaeologists, who are accustomed to fussing over the tiniest details, is that nobody knows quite where the bone came from or even when it was found."

We admit having never heard of this before. The sentence quoted above makes it well-nigh impossible to evaluate it.

And in related news. . . Finder of first Peking Man skull commemorated in Beijing

An exhibition is being held in Beijing to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pei Wenzhong,the discoverer of the first Peking Man skull.

The exhibition, which showcases Pei's life and achievements, began Friday and will last through the end of the year. This year is also the 75th anniversary of Pei's discovery.

Born in 1904 in north China's Hebei Province, Pei was a famous prehistory archaeologist and paleontologist and a founder of China's studies in Paleolithic archaeology.

Another lost city, found Remains of Sanish surfacing in dry Lake Sakakawea

The town of Sanish, flooded 50 years ago when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River to create Lake Sakakawea, has started to reappear as years of drought have lowered the lake.

Corps archaeologist Steve Gilbert said about one-third of the town is visible, though there is not much left but building foundations and rubble.

"But for some of the old-timers who may have lived here and are still alive ... they would have a pretty good idea of what they're looking at," he said.

The federal government bought out the town, and it was evacuated in 1953. The 1950 census said Sanish had 500 residents.

Gilbert said the remains of the town are on federal land, and it is a crime to take anything from the site.

That's the whole thing.

From Egypt to Peru, archaeologists are unearthing breweries from long ago

Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself. It's mentioned in Sumerian texts from more than 5,000 years ago. Starting in the 1950s, scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the impetus for the development of agriculture. Nearly every culture around the world has invented its own local concoction. Historically, brewing was a home-based operation, as part of the preparation of meals. From South America to the Middle East, beer production grew in scale with the rise of organized societies, scientists theorize, and later became primarily a function of the state. Beer was given to laborers or soldiers, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and drunk by politicians at state functions.

Almost all of what scientists know about beer's history, however, is based on written evidence and drawings, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Roman tablets, and European frescoes. Such works tell, for example, that thousands of years ago in Iraq, each city-state had its own brew master, says anthropologist James L. Phillips of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Archaeologists will date any old thing Marking time is a science at Berkeley center -- It devises ways to date nearly everything

When chemist Willard F. Libby discovered unexpected evidence that all the plants on Earth, both living and dead, were faintly radioactive, he opened an era of age-dating that has since seen extraordinary new techniques emerge to tell how old everything might be -- from mountains to fossil microbes.

Would you like to know how long ago the Pharaoh Sesostris III of Egypt sailed to the land of the dead aboard his funerary boat? Libby's "atomic clock" determined it almost exactly: It was 3,676 years ago, give or take a decade or two.

Do you want to know how long ago our earliest relatives on the human family tree lived in Africa's Great Rift Valley? Geochronologists in Berkeley can tell you that one branch of hominids inhabited a once-verdant site in now arid Ethiopia about 5.8 million years ago -- among the earliest prehuman remains discovered so far.

And then there's this: Arab scholar 'cracked Rosetta code' 800 years before the West

It is famed as a critical moment in code-breaking history. Using a piece of basalt carved with runes and words, scholars broke the secret of hieroglyphs, the written 'language' of the ancient Egyptians.

A baffling, opaque language had been made comprehensible, and the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilisations revealed - thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the analytic prowess of 18th and 19th century European scholars.

But now the supremacy of Western thinking has been challenged by a London researcher who claims that hieroglyphs had been decoded hundreds of years earlier - by an Arabic alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah.

'It has taken years of painstaking research to prove this,' said Dr Okasha El Daly, at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. 'I was convinced that Western scholars were not the first, and I have found evidence that shows Arabian scholars broke the code a thousand years ago.'

We vaguely remember linking, or at least reading, something on this a while back. If we recall correctly, there was some work on deciphering Egyptian glygphs by the Arab scholar noted in the piece, but the controversy regards how much of it he actually interpreted correctly. Did it lead to real translations, in other words. This was just posted on the EEF list and we will pass along any commentary on it.

Gobs of news today, so multiple posts will probably take place over the day. Third post is probably the most interesting.

They made an offer no one could refuse. . . ARCHAEOLOGY: MEDITERRANEAN ANCIENT HISTORY HAS SICILIAN BASE

The commercial and political history in the ancient Mediterranean area is documented in the relics that are spread generously around the Capo Molini seabed, which is just north of Catania, between Acitrezza e Acireale. The results of the excavation carried out this summer in that part of the sea, between the coast and the Cyclops Islands were being presented by Edoardo Tortorici, an archaeologist at the University of Catania. He was speaking at the International Under-Water Archaeological Conference being held in Aci Castello. He said, "The findings that have been studied show the origins of the commercial system. Over the course of more than a thousand years, this operated along Sicily's eastern coast, from the archaic era of maritime trafficking with the ancient Greek colonies (from the 6th to the 1st centuries B.C..) up to the beginning of the Medioeval period (7th century A.D.).

No paragraph breaks, difficult to read. Kind of interesting though.

Nice pot Archaeologist based in San Marcos unveils new discoveries in Israel

Dr. Randall Price of San Marcos is a co-pastor at Grace Bible Church, so on weeks that he preaches, like any other pastor, he prepares a sermon that will retell a piece of the biblical past. But this particular pastor does a lot more than narrate history. In fact, he creates it.

Price - arch- aeologist, theologian, pastor, professor, father and husband - has just returned from an excavation in Israel, and as he begins to tell of his latest discovery, you realize you're speaking to more than just an inspiring preacher, but a man at the forefront of theological discoveries.

Hmmmmmmm. . . . Discovery keeps human origin debate alive

For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake - bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men.

The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to fit: a mineral-darkened piece of brow ridge bone and a bit of jaw that didn't match any modern skulls.

But Solorzano found a perfect fit when he placed the brow against a model of the Old World's Tautavel Man - member of a species, Homo erectus, that many believe was an ancestor of modern homo sapiens.

The catch: Homo erectus is believed to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago - tens of thousands of years before men are believed to have reached the Americas.

And archaeologists have never found a trace of Homo erectus in the Americas.

Key sentence: Most frustrating for archaeologists, who are accustomed to fussing over the tiniest details, is that nobody knows quite where the bone came from or even when it was found."

We admit having never heard of this before. The sentence quoted above makes it well-nigh impossible to evaluate it.

And in related news. . . Finder of first Peking Man skull commemorated in Beijing

An exhibition is being held in Beijing to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pei Wenzhong,the discoverer of the first Peking Man skull.

The exhibition, which showcases Pei's life and achievements, began Friday and will last through the end of the year. This year is also the 75th anniversary of Pei's discovery.

Born in 1904 in north China's Hebei Province, Pei was a famous prehistory archaeologist and paleontologist and a founder of China's studies in Paleolithic archaeology.

Another lost city, found Remains of Sanish surfacing in dry Lake Sakakawea

The town of Sanish, flooded 50 years ago when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River to create Lake Sakakawea, has started to reappear as years of drought have lowered the lake.

Corps archaeologist Steve Gilbert said about one-third of the town is visible, though there is not much left but building foundations and rubble.

"But for some of the old-timers who may have lived here and are still alive ... they would have a pretty good idea of what they're looking at," he said.

The federal government bought out the town, and it was evacuated in 1953. The 1950 census said Sanish had 500 residents.

Gilbert said the remains of the town are on federal land, and it is a crime to take anything from the site.

That's the whole thing.

From Egypt to Peru, archaeologists are unearthing breweries from long ago

Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself. It's mentioned in Sumerian texts from more than 5,000 years ago. Starting in the 1950s, scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the impetus for the development of agriculture. Nearly every culture around the world has invented its own local concoction. Historically, brewing was a home-based operation, as part of the preparation of meals. From South America to the Middle East, beer production grew in scale with the rise of organized societies, scientists theorize, and later became primarily a function of the state. Beer was given to laborers or soldiers, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and drunk by politicians at state functions.

Almost all of what scientists know about beer's history, however, is based on written evidence and drawings, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Roman tablets, and European frescoes. Such works tell, for example, that thousands of years ago in Iraq, each city-state had its own brew master, says anthropologist James L. Phillips of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Archaeologists will date any old thing Marking time is a science at Berkeley center -- It devises ways to date nearly everything

When chemist Willard F. Libby discovered unexpected evidence that all the plants on Earth, both living and dead, were faintly radioactive, he opened an era of age-dating that has since seen extraordinary new techniques emerge to tell how old everything might be -- from mountains to fossil microbes.

Would you like to know how long ago the Pharaoh Sesostris III of Egypt sailed to the land of the dead aboard his funerary boat? Libby's "atomic clock" determined it almost exactly: It was 3,676 years ago, give or take a decade or two.

Do you want to know how long ago our earliest relatives on the human family tree lived in Africa's Great Rift Valley? Geochronologists in Berkeley can tell you that one branch of hominids inhabited a once-verdant site in now arid Ethiopia about 5.8 million years ago -- among the earliest prehuman remains discovered so far.

And then there's this: Arab scholar 'cracked Rosetta code' 800 years before the West

It is famed as a critical moment in code-breaking history. Using a piece of basalt carved with runes and words, scholars broke the secret of hieroglyphs, the written 'language' of the ancient Egyptians.

A baffling, opaque language had been made comprehensible, and the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilisations revealed - thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the analytic prowess of 18th and 19th century European scholars.

But now the supremacy of Western thinking has been challenged by a London researcher who claims that hieroglyphs had been decoded hundreds of years earlier - by an Arabic alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah.

'It has taken years of painstaking research to prove this,' said Dr Okasha El Daly, at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. 'I was convinced that Western scholars were not the first, and I have found evidence that shows Arabian scholars broke the code a thousand years ago.'

We vaguely remember linking, or at least reading, something on this a while back. If we recall correctly, there was some work on deciphering Egyptian glygphs by the Arab scholar noted in the piece, but the controversy regards how much of it he actually interpreted correctly. Did it lead to real translations, in other words. This was just posted on the EEF list and we will pass along any commentary on it.

Gobs of news today, so multiple posts will probably take place over the day. Third post is probably the most interesting.

They made an offer no one could refuse. . . ARCHAEOLOGY: MEDITERRANEAN ANCIENT HISTORY HAS SICILIAN BASE

The commercial and political history in the ancient Mediterranean area is documented in the relics that are spread generously around the Capo Molini seabed, which is just north of Catania, between Acitrezza e Acireale. The results of the excavation carried out this summer in that part of the sea, between the coast and the Cyclops Islands were being presented by Edoardo Tortorici, an archaeologist at the University of Catania. He was speaking at the International Under-Water Archaeological Conference being held in Aci Castello. He said, "The findings that have been studied show the origins of the commercial system. Over the course of more than a thousand years, this operated along Sicily's eastern coast, from the archaic era of maritime trafficking with the ancient Greek colonies (from the 6th to the 1st centuries B.C..) up to the beginning of the Medioeval period (7th century A.D.).

No paragraph breaks, difficult to read. Kind of interesting though.

Nice pot Archaeologist based in San Marcos unveils new discoveries in Israel

Dr. Randall Price of San Marcos is a co-pastor at Grace Bible Church, so on weeks that he preaches, like any other pastor, he prepares a sermon that will retell a piece of the biblical past. But this particular pastor does a lot more than narrate history. In fact, he creates it.

Price - arch- aeologist, theologian, pastor, professor, father and husband - has just returned from an excavation in Israel, and as he begins to tell of his latest discovery, you realize you're speaking to more than just an inspiring preacher, but a man at the forefront of theological discoveries.

Hmmmmmmm. . . . Discovery keeps human origin debate alive

For decades, Federico Solorzano has gathered old bones from the shores of Mexico's largest lake - bones he found and bones he was brought, bones of beasts and bones of men.

The longtime teacher of anthropology and paleontology was sifting through his collection one day when he noticed some that didn't seem to fit: a mineral-darkened piece of brow ridge bone and a bit of jaw that didn't match any modern skulls.

But Solorzano found a perfect fit when he placed the brow against a model of the Old World's Tautavel Man - member of a species, Homo erectus, that many believe was an ancestor of modern homo sapiens.

The catch: Homo erectus is believed to have died out 100,000 to 200,000 years ago - tens of thousands of years before men are believed to have reached the Americas.

And archaeologists have never found a trace of Homo erectus in the Americas.

Key sentence: Most frustrating for archaeologists, who are accustomed to fussing over the tiniest details, is that nobody knows quite where the bone came from or even when it was found."

We admit having never heard of this before. The sentence quoted above makes it well-nigh impossible to evaluate it.

And in related news. . . Finder of first Peking Man skull commemorated in Beijing

An exhibition is being held in Beijing to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Pei Wenzhong,the discoverer of the first Peking Man skull.

The exhibition, which showcases Pei's life and achievements, began Friday and will last through the end of the year. This year is also the 75th anniversary of Pei's discovery.

Born in 1904 in north China's Hebei Province, Pei was a famous prehistory archaeologist and paleontologist and a founder of China's studies in Paleolithic archaeology.

Another lost city, found Remains of Sanish surfacing in dry Lake Sakakawea

The town of Sanish, flooded 50 years ago when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River to create Lake Sakakawea, has started to reappear as years of drought have lowered the lake.

Corps archaeologist Steve Gilbert said about one-third of the town is visible, though there is not much left but building foundations and rubble.

"But for some of the old-timers who may have lived here and are still alive ... they would have a pretty good idea of what they're looking at," he said.

The federal government bought out the town, and it was evacuated in 1953. The 1950 census said Sanish had 500 residents.

Gilbert said the remains of the town are on federal land, and it is a crime to take anything from the site.

That's the whole thing.

From Egypt to Peru, archaeologists are unearthing breweries from long ago

Beer is nearly as old as civilization itself. It's mentioned in Sumerian texts from more than 5,000 years ago. Starting in the 1950s, scientists have debated the notion that beer, not bread, was actually the impetus for the development of agriculture. Nearly every culture around the world has invented its own local concoction. Historically, brewing was a home-based operation, as part of the preparation of meals. From South America to the Middle East, beer production grew in scale with the rise of organized societies, scientists theorize, and later became primarily a function of the state. Beer was given to laborers or soldiers, incorporated into religious ceremonies, and drunk by politicians at state functions.

Almost all of what scientists know about beer's history, however, is based on written evidence and drawings, including Egyptian hieroglyphs, Roman tablets, and European frescoes. Such works tell, for example, that thousands of years ago in Iraq, each city-state had its own brew master, says anthropologist James L. Phillips of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Archaeologists will date any old thing Marking time is a science at Berkeley center -- It devises ways to date nearly everything

When chemist Willard F. Libby discovered unexpected evidence that all the plants on Earth, both living and dead, were faintly radioactive, he opened an era of age-dating that has since seen extraordinary new techniques emerge to tell how old everything might be -- from mountains to fossil microbes.

Would you like to know how long ago the Pharaoh Sesostris III of Egypt sailed to the land of the dead aboard his funerary boat? Libby's "atomic clock" determined it almost exactly: It was 3,676 years ago, give or take a decade or two.

Do you want to know how long ago our earliest relatives on the human family tree lived in Africa's Great Rift Valley? Geochronologists in Berkeley can tell you that one branch of hominids inhabited a once-verdant site in now arid Ethiopia about 5.8 million years ago -- among the earliest prehuman remains discovered so far.

And then there's this: Arab scholar 'cracked Rosetta code' 800 years before the West

It is famed as a critical moment in code-breaking history. Using a piece of basalt carved with runes and words, scholars broke the secret of hieroglyphs, the written 'language' of the ancient Egyptians.

A baffling, opaque language had been made comprehensible, and the secrets of one of the world's greatest civilisations revealed - thanks to the Rosetta Stone and the analytic prowess of 18th and 19th century European scholars.

But now the supremacy of Western thinking has been challenged by a London researcher who claims that hieroglyphs had been decoded hundreds of years earlier - by an Arabic alchemist, Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn Wahshiyah.

'It has taken years of painstaking research to prove this,' said Dr Okasha El Daly, at UCL's Institute of Archaeology. 'I was convinced that Western scholars were not the first, and I have found evidence that shows Arabian scholars broke the code a thousand years ago.'

We vaguely remember linking, or at least reading, something on this a while back. If we recall correctly, there was some work on deciphering Egyptian glygphs by the Arab scholar noted in the piece, but the controversy regards how much of it he actually interpreted correctly. Did it lead to real translations, in other words. This was just posted on the EEF list and we will pass along any commentary on it.

We aren't sure about the 'sensation(al)' part. . . 'European archaeological sensation' unearthed

An ornament for horses dating back to the 1st century A.D. has been found during excavations of a Roman Empire-era military camp near the southern Croatian city of Drnis, local media reports said on Friday.

Croatian Minister for Culture Bozo Biskupic said the ornament - a small, crescent-shaped object fashioned from bronze and designed to be worn on the animal's head - was a "European archaeological sensation" because it was the biggest such item found and very well-preserved.

A similar item was excavated near Magdeburg, Germany, but it was smaller and less well-preserved, it was said.

Excavations of the camp are still underway and archaeologists believe more precious items could be found.

Then again, when you're used to little bits of pottery and bones and junk, this could look pretty darn cool.

Junk found in water Treasure found off Kudat coast

A Chinese junk containing ceramics from the Sung Dynasty that sank off the coast of Kudat, Sabah, about 1,000 years ago has been located recently, said Museum and Antiquity Department deputy director-general Md Redzuan Tumin.

He said local fishermen discovered the wreck about two months ago.

“It’s about 20m deep and located between Kudat and Pulau Bangi.

“We have retrieved some ceramics from the wreck, which appeared to have been tampered with,” he told reporters after witnessing a soft launch to mark the opening of Kota Ngah Ibrahim.

Pomegranates! 2 500-year-old pomegranates found

Four pomegranates thought to be 2 500 years old were found preserved intact inside a woven basket placed in a bronze vessel that was unearthed during an archaeological dig, an archaeologist said on Friday.

The fruits were found at an archaeological dig in the area of Ancient Corinth, located about 100 kilometres west of Athens.

"They were preserved because the vessel was closed very well. The oxidization of the bronze functioned protectively, so no microorganisms developed and destroyed the them," said Panayiota Kasimi, the archaeologist in charge of the dig.

Archaeologists have been digging in a search for any antiquities ahead of the construction of a railroad line in the area. Such archaeological digs are common prior to major construction projects.

The pomegranates have been placed in a special refrigerator and will be studied further by experts, Kasimi said.

Archaeologists would not allow the fruit to be photographed.

That's the whole thing. The interesting part about this is the preservative qualities of bronze which contains copper which is poisonous to the microorganisms that would otherwise consume the organics. This is why you often find bronze or copper weapons together with their sheaths, or at least the parts of the sheath that are close to the implement. Bronze objects in tombs also very often preserve parts of the burial shrouds.

Here's some stuff on bronze, for the metalurgically inclined.