Nuclear Analysis Reveals Secrets Of Inca Burial Site
Researchers have applied a unique nuclear analytic technique to pottery found at an ancient burial site high in the Andes mountains, and believe that the girl buried at this site was transported more than 600 miles in a ceremonial pilgrimage - revealing some customs and rituals of the ancient Inca empire.
The findings are being published by scientists from Oregon State University in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.
On the highest peaks of the Andes, sacrificial burial sites have been discovered since the early 1900s. In one of them was the fully intact, frozen body of a girl who was sacrificed at age 15, called "The Ice Maiden," and buried more than five centuries ago along with various vessels - in what appeared to be one of the ritualistic ceremonies of that era.
Interesting. But we wonder what linking evidence was made to support the notion that both the pottery and the person had their origins at the same place.
Academics suggest Irish travellers are remnant of pre-Celtic culture
Irish travellers, long derided as anti-social itinerants rather than "true" Gypsies, are an ancient people in their own right, researchers say.
. . .
Research by an Irish socio-linguist, Dr Alice Binchy, suggests that more than half the surviving Cant/Gammon lexicon may be derived from a long-lost language spoken in Ireland before the Celts arrived. "A partially pre-Celtic origin would have substantial implications for the way we look not only at traveller history, but at early Irish history as a whole," said Dr Binchy, a delegate at a conference of linguists, historians and anthropologists to be held at the University of Limerick.
HADRIAN’S WALL COULD LINK WITH PAST FRONTIER
THE FRONTIERS of the Roman empire could be resurrected under plans to join Hadrian’s Wall with the chain of forts and walls across Europe in one World Heritage Site.
Such a move could create a European rival to the Great Wall of China and a major boost to tourism in Cumbria.
An Anglo-German bid will be considered by the World Heritage Committee in July to create a new heritage site called Frontiers of the Roman Empire.
Upshot: Make the whole length of the Roman frontier a single World Heritage site.
Heh. "St. Pete" St Pete researchers find tattoos on ancient Siberian mummies
Infrared photography methods, used for the first time by researchers at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, have made it possible to discover tattoos in ancient mummies excavated in the Pazyryk mounds in the south Siberian Altai Mountains.
The mounds date back to the 8th to 5th centuries BC.
The discovery was made on three mummies – two that used to be female bodies and one male body -- that were produced by special treatment for burial ceremonies.
We thought we'd heard of something similar before and we were right: From various docs on TV regarding other Siberian mummies, notably the Ice Maiden from several years back.
They're not made out of bratwurst The Dragon in the Lake -- New Book Reveals Latest Research on the Ancient Underwater Pyramids in Wisconsin
In the cold murky depths of a Wisconsin lake lay mysterious rock structures wrapped in Native American folklore and local legend. These ancient underwater manmade structures may be the most significant and controversial North American archeological discovery of the twentieth century. In Archie Eschborn's fascinating new book The Dragon in the Lake, you will follow a small band of amateur archeologists led by Eschborn himself as they reveal new research opening up a new chapter in prehistoric North American history and ending decades of controversy on North America's most sacred and secret native American site.
Looked kinda fishy (heh, no pun intended) when we first started reading this, and it seems we were correct in our initial assessment. Seems to be typical hyperbolic fluff, full of exciting! adjectives regarding the explosive! nature of the findings and the soon-to-be-nigh collapse of the status quo. So anyway, you can read more about it here.
Fraud? Ptolemy Tilted Off His Axis
In a sunlit gallery of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Italy, astronomer Brad Schaefer came face to face with an ancient statue known as the Farnese Atlas.
For centuries, the 7-foot marble figure of the mythological Atlas has bent in stoic agony with a sphere of the cosmos crushing his shoulders.
. . .
But as Schaefer approached, he began to notice subtle details in the arrangement of the constellations. It wasn't that anything was wrong with the statue. If anything, the positions of the constellations were too perfect to be mere decoration.
This is only vaguely archaeological and rather out of our purview to evaluate with any real confidence, but it sounds interesting.
Antiquities Market update
In the span of just a few months, three museums featuring rare Indian artifacts have been plundered, leaving authorities looking for the culprits and culture aficionados mourning the loss.
For the tribes involved, the loss cuts much deeper.
The first theft happened in California on Christmas Eve of last year as thieves entered the Daggett Museum in Barstow and spirited away just about all of the Indian-themed displays. The stolen items included a $2,500 Navajo wedding basket, arrowheads, American Indian baskets, pottery and more.
Gold love ring is treasure trove
A collection of artefacts dating from the Bronze Age to the 1600s has been declared treasure by a coroner's court in Cardiff.
The items were found over the course of 18 months at various sites in the Vale of Glamorgan, south Wales.
They included a gold Elizabethan ring with the inscription "Let Liking Last" on its inner rim, found near the ruins of a manor house in Llantrithyd.