Bronze Age skeletons found in dig

Archaeologists have unearthed a unique site in Kent which they claim contains the best preserved examples of Bronze Age skeletons.

The discovery was made in a six-month excavation of a plot of land in Ramsgate, which is due to be the site of a new housing development.

The location has not been revealed because of its national importance.

Archaeologist Darren Godden said the find would help explain what happened to human remains during the Bronze Age.

Antiquities Market update France seizes African archaeological objects

French customs officials have seized 845 African archaeological objects, including 70-million-year-old dinosaur fossils and rare figurines, destined for possible resale in Belgium, the government said on Saturday.

The French Finance Ministry said in a statement that the objects were part of a 503kg cargo sent from Niger in north Africa and falsely declared as "artisan products".

Fight! Fight! Anger over Stonehenge delays

The National Trust accused the government of abandoning the scheme to rescue Stonehenge from the stranglehold of traffic yesterday, despite its undertakings to protect the world heritage site.

Fiona Reynolds, the director general of the trust, said there was an "ominous silence on the subject", forcing the National Trust and English Heritage to delay plans for a £25m centre and improvements at the site.

She has written to Alistair Darling, the transport secretary, protesting against the decision to downgrade the scheme to improve the A303 and refer it to the South West regional assembly.

Toga! Toga!


New broom to make togas the Roman way

RESEARCHERS in the ancient Roman town of Pompeii are attempting to revive 2,000-year-old traditions to reproduce imperial cloth used to make togas and uniforms.

The project follows successful production of Roman wine two years ago using methods that would have been employed in vineyards buried by a devastating eruption from Mount Vesuvius in AD79. Historians at the archaeology department in Pompeii are experimenting with wild broom as the base product to make the textiles.

Mohr news from Mehr 6000-year-old site in southeast Iran yields huge cache of earthenware

Iranian archaeologists have unearthed over 600,000 intact earthenware pottery works and shards in the newly discovered 6000-year-old rocky habitation near the Halil-Rud River cultural area, where the ancient site of Jiroft is located, the director of the archaeological team working in the area announced on Sunday.

“Our team has discovered a great number of intact potteries and a large amount of shards, the volume of which reaches one meter in height in some areas,” Davud Abyan said.

Also this: Precise ruler from ancient times discovered in Burnt City

Archaeologists recently discovered a 10-centimeter ruler with an accuracy of half a millimeter in the ruins of the 5200-year-old Burnt City, the director of the archaeological team announced on Monday.

“During the recent excavation, we found a piece of ebony wood 10 centimeters in length with regular furrows which seemed to be created by a sharp instrument. After several examinations using special tools, we learned that the grooves were carved in lengths of one millimeter and half a millimeter,” Mansur Sajjadi added.

Necropolis of Old Bulgarian Rulers under Search

Archeologists plan to launch excavation works in the roundabouts of Old Bulgarian capital Pliska in search for an ancient town or mausoleum considered to keep the remains of Bulgarian khans.

The suggested royal necropolis is believed to reveal the burial sites of mighty Bulgarian khans Krum, Omurtag and their successors.

We hadn't heard of this Under scrap yard, emperor's palace being uncovered: Buried treasure emerges near Rome's Colosseum

When the infamous emperor Nero fell from power in 68 A.D., weakened by military revolts, his successors decided that no personal trace of his reign should remain. They covered with debris the giant and sumptuous Domus Aurea — Golden House — that he built on a hill in central Rome. They replaced an adjacent artificial lake with the Colosseum.

The entombment of the palace was meant to make everyone forget Nero. Instead, it had the effect of conserving, as if in amber, his residential compound as few ancient sites in Rome have been. Last week, Rome city officials unveiled a new find that offers a tantalizing hint of the treasures that remain buried beneath the hill almost 2,000 years after Nero's rule.

Very neat though.

Interesting: Protocol for ancient human remains

Some 2,500 former residents of Barton-on-Humber, in north Lincolnshire, will soon move into the organ loft at the ancient church of St Peter in an experiment which will set new standards for archaeologists dealing with thousands of Christian burials uncovered every year, deliberately or by chance.

Although burials in consecrated ground are covered by ecclesiastical and secular law, there have until now been no consistent guidelines on how to handle remains no longer resting in peace - for archaeologists, developers, or parish priests.

Be nice if something similar could be worked out for older Amerindian remains here, i.e., those that are too old to be really affiliated with any modern tribe, but still demonstrably "native american".

Fight! Fight! II Give us back our chariot, Umbrian villagers tell the Metropolitan Museum

A tiny Umbrian village is taking on the mighty Metropolitan Museum in New York, claiming that one of its most exalted exhibits, an Etruscan chariot, was illegally exported from Italy 100 years ago.

The sixth-century bronze and ivory chariot, the pride of the museum's Etruscan collection, was originally sold to two Frenchmen by a farmer who dug it up in a field at Monteleone di Spoleto, near Perugia, in 1902.

According to family lore, the farmer received two cows in exchange. The local mayor, Nando Durastanti, believes that he actually swapped the chariot, one of the world's greatest antiquities, for 30 terracotta tiles. It was later dismantled and illegally exported from Italy, concealed in a grain shipment.

Fight! Fight! III Battle rages over Irish Celtic site

Ancient England may have Stonehenge, but ancient Ireland has the Hill of Tara. The 6,000-year-old sacred site in the middle of quiet rolling fields is revered here as the burial place of 140 kings, and as the formative birthplace of this land's national identity.
.
Modern Ireland also has Dublin, whose growing metropolitan area is home to about 1.5 million people out of Ireland's population of close to 4 million. The city's expansion is causing a clash that is affecting the entire country, as lovers of the mythical and prehistoric Ireland try to preserve the tranquillity of Tara as local residents of the area struggle to commute to the capital on antiquated and inadequate roads.

Sure is a lot of conflict going on all of a sudden. . . . .

Kind of an old story, but this article has a lot more information than in the past.

Farouk Hosni: Spanish mission excavates 11 ancient tombs in Ahansia

"The Spanish archaeological mission under the National Antiquities Museum in Madrid has unearthed about eleven tombs built with unburnt bricks inside a cemetery dating back to 2061- 2190 BC", Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni said adding that the mission found fake gates, religious paintings and courban tables.

For his part the Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawas said that the mission has unearthed 12 chambers built with unburnt bricks with arch ceilings.

The mission also found chains and necklaces made of precious stones with the shape of sea shells, added Hawas.

That's pretty old so interesting, we think. That's the whole thing. Expect more detail later in the week.

Range Creek Canyon update Archaeological treasure in legislators' hands

Protecting the archaeological resources of Range Creek Canyon used to be the self-appointed responsibility of a single landowner. Now the job belongs to the Utah Legislature.

Last June, state officials announced that Utah was the new owner of property once protected by rancher Waldo Wilcox near the Carbon-Emery county border. The property was purchased by the Trust for Public Land, a conservation group, and then Congress appropriated money to help the state acquire it.
Altogether, the site about 130 miles southeast of Salt Lake City includes about 4,000 acres in new state land. It controls access to another 50,000 acres of federal and state school land, much of it in two wilderness study areas.

This was the large area containing many sites that had been left pretty much as-is under private ownership.

Discovery of brick tablet in Jiroft proves 3rd millennium BC civilization

A brick tablet unearthed in the vicinity of Jiroft proves that the civilization of the area along Halilroud river near the city of Jiroft dates back to he first half of the third millennium BC.

An archaeologist from the US University of Pennsylvania, Professor Holly Pittman, told IRNA here Monday that the issue had been declared at the area by the Iranian archaeologist and head of archaeological delegation, Professor Yousef Majidzadeh, last year.

Pittman added that the tablet had been unearthed in the process of this year's excavations at Halilroud historical site on January 27.

Fragments of History: Zhougong Temple

According to the latest reports from the Zhougong Temple archeological team, they are busy piecing together the more than 700 fragments of oracle bones and inscribed tortoiseshell that have been recovered from the site.

The temple is located at the foot of Mount Fenghuang, in Qishan County of northwest China's Shaanxi Province. It was built in AD 618 to commemorate Zhougong, a lord of the Western Zhou Dynasty (c.1100-771 BC). The tombs found there are the richest of the dynasty so far discovered, and there has been speculation that they may be royal.

Dig may have found ancient monk's home

ARCHAEOLOGISTS may have found the home of St Baldred of the Bass, one of the best known monks of 8th century Scotland.

Relics from one of the first settlements at North Berwick suggest the hermit lived at Anchor Green, next to the site of the Scottish Seabird Centre at the town’s harbour.

Until recently the area was known only to have been a medieval cemetery but now archaeologists have found domestic animal bones and remains of burned food dating to the 8th century - revealing that people lived on the site.

Tom Addyman, who is leading the £20,000 dig, said: "We have found two layers comprising a 12th century church with an early Christian site underneath. The church would have been built on top of an earlier church so it would have only been a holy man that lived here. St Baldred of the Bass is linked to the area so we think this is where he could have lived."

That's the whole thing.


Eroding Iron Age fort repaired

Work to halt the erosion of an Iron Age hill fort in Gloucestershire is due to begin soon.

Kimsbury Camp on Painswick Beacon is a popular beauty spot, visited by local people and walkers on the Cotswold Way.

The £85,000 facelift will include repairs to erosion scars and ramparts, scrub clearance and the provision of sensitively located information boards.

Treasure!
Treasure found in Viking market

Archaeologists believe what they originally thought was a Viking burial ground in Cumbria, may actually have been a 10th Century market.

Excited experts unearthed a wealth of treasures at the site, near Barrow.

They were particularly impressed with a merchant's weight, which is the size of a finger and shows a dragon design with two figures.

CSI: Jamestown



Photo in the News: America's Lost Founding Father?

Today in England an archaeological team began the search for DNA that could prove that the skeleton pictured above is that of Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold. In 1607 Gosnold founded the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia, but died a few months later.

Gosnold's sister and niece are believed to be buried in churchyards in Suffolk, England. If their DNA can be extracted from their remains—and if that DNA matches Gosnold's—archaeologists will know for sure that the bones are Gosnold's.

With the support of the Church of England and funding from the National Geographic Society, the graveyards were to be surveyed today with ground radar, to establish the feasibility of taking DNA samples.