It's not a good way to start Archaeology Month in Indiana.
A spear point that might be more than 12,000 years old has turned up missing after being part of an "artifact road show" by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources last weekend during the state fair.
Heh Scientists acclaim rare discovery: a vertebrate board of directors.
News from the EEF
Press report: "Ancient Egypt gems on Italian isle"
http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2005-08-25_1087109.html
"A priceless set of ancient jewellery, probably from Egypt, is
the latest archaeological jackpot experts have struck on this
southern Italian island [Pantelleria]. Excavations at the
16th-century BC settlement of Mursia, on the north-western
part of the isle, have uncovered a beautiful oriental style ring,
necklace and pair of ear-rings. (...) "The raw materials probably
came from Cyprus or Anatolia, but their style suggests they
were made in Egypt," Tusa explained. "This type of broad ring
was worn a great deal by women in the Second Intermediate
Period of Ancient Egypt (1700-1550 BC)"."
See also:
http://www.ansamed.it/ansamed/news/newshp/last/2005-08-23_1073544.html
Press report: "Archaeological finds unearthed in Egypt"
http://www.sis.gov.eg/online/html12/o190825f.htm
"A joint Egyptian-German mission have found wooden artefact, coins
and old manuscripts in Minya governorate (...) The finds date back
to the Polemic and Roman ages."
* Press report: "Who's this Mummy?
http://snipurl.com/h737
"Most recently, the self-taught student of Egyptology [Dr. Rajiv Gupta] was
part of a team at MGH that used their experimental imaging machine to take
very detailed CT scans of a special patient - Djehutynakht, a 4,000 year old
mummy artifact of an Egyptian governor from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts."
* Press report: "Prof finds insight into Egyptians in dead language"
http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=113982
"Northern Arizona University history professor [Eu]gene Cruz-Uribe
studies a language no longer written, but the marks of which can
still be found in quarries, temples and tombs in Egypt. This cursive
language is Demotic."
Press report: "Egyptian-Jordanian contacts to restore Pharaonic statue"
http://www.sis.gov.eg/online/html12/o220825e.htm
"The Egyptian Embassy in Amman had contacts with the Jordanian
authorities to bring back to Egypt a [smuggled] statue." No details.
Press report: "Zahi Hawass: A Hat is a Hat"
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/757/profile.htm
Interview with Zahi Hawass, mainly about old issues.
Press report: "The lost tomb of "the father of Egypt". The discovery
that has never been made."
http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/94/377/16028_Amenhotep.html
After a terrible quantity of unequal articles concerning the supposed
Amenhotep I tomb, published in the Russian media, our newspaper
"Pravda" asked me to write a professional opinion about the "discovery".
[Eds. Good article. Read the whole thing.]
Online version of: S. A. Macko, M. H. Engel, V. Andrusevich, G. Lubec,
T. C. O' Connell, R. E. M. Hedges, Documenting the diet in ancient human
populations through stable isotope analysis of hair, Philosophical
Transactions: Biological Sciences, vol. 354, pp. 65-76 (1999) - pdf-file:
210 KB.
http://snipurl.com/h73k [search for 'Macko']
[http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/app/home/content.asp?wasp=8a0258a769a04c
eab0e8f958650f9a1b&referrer=contribution&format=2&page=1&pagecount=12]
"... In this study, we suggest that a commonly overlooked material, human
hair, may represent an ideal material to be used in addressing human diets
of ancient civilizations. Through the analysis of the amino-acid composition
of modern hair, as well as samples that were subjected to radiation (thus
simulating ageing of the hair) and hair from humans that is up to 5200 years
old, we have observed little in the way of chemical change ... For example,
the Copts of Egypt (1000 BP) and Chinchorro of Chile (5000 to 800 BP)
have diets of similar diversity to those observed in the modern group but
were isotopically influenced by local nutritional sources. In other ancient
hair (Egyptian Late Middle Kingdom mummies, ca. 4000 BP), we have
observed a much more uniform isotopic signature, indicating a more
constant diet ... It appears that analysis of the often-overlooked hair in
archaeological sites may represent a significant new approach for
understanding ancient human communities."
Also, check Andie's posts on a Roman mosaic found in the Sinai.
End of EEF news
Grave reveals medieval Caesareans
The medieval remains of a mother and daughter found in North Yorkshire shows signs of an attempted Caesarean operation, scientists have revealed.
The 900-year-old grave at Wharram Percy held the remains of a woman aged between 25 and 30 with a baby.
A study of the remains by English Heritage showed the woman died during her pregnancy and the foetus was cut free from the womb in a bid to save it.
This doesn't really seem a surprising thing to find, but we kind of wonder why we haven't heard of it before.
New understanding of human sacrifice in early Peru
...this newly published study by Richard Sutter and Rosa Cortez compares genetically influenced tooth cusp and root traits for the Moche sacrificial victims from a pyramid at the Moche capital with those of other North Coast populations. The findings of this archaeological comparison indicate that the sacrificial victims were not local Moche elite. Instead they were likely warriors captured from nearby valleys. When this result is considered in light of other archaeological and skeletal lines of evidence it suggests that the Moche populations in each valley were characterized by territorial conflict and competition with one another.
Iceland update #3 Secrets of Ancient Iceland, Dispatch 3: Seeing the context
Haymaking is just about over here in northern Iceland, and as the farmers haul their round bales out of the fields, the 13 crew members of the Skagafjordur Archaeological Settlement Survey have been moving in. My part of the crew took the turf off a 750-square-meter section of hayfield just below the Glaumbaer Folk Museum in mid-July, and began scraping away the dirt to reveal the collapsed walls of a 40-meter-long Viking Age house abandoned before 1104.
At the same time a small contingent including Penn State anthropologist Paul Durrenberger, one of the principal investigators of this National Science Foundation-funded project, began digging test pits in nearby farm mounds. Day after day, the Glaumbaer group moved dirt, looking first for the chalky white tephra left by the eruption of Mount Hekla in 1104, and then for any sign of peat ash or bone or the mottled earthy colors of a turf wall under the tephra. I worked mostly on my knees in the shallow, wide holes, using a dustpan and trowel.