More than 300 ancient Peruvian artifacts, including a 3,500-year-old clay pot and a burial shroud used by royalty, have been recovered in south Florida as part of a smuggling investigation, federal officials said Friday.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents said the colorful painted pottery, tapestries, gold jewelry, masks and other items represented one of the largest seizures of pre-Columbian artifacts from Peru ever smuggled into the United States.
"These items are not souvenirs people can buy on the streets," said Anthony Mangione, assistant special agent in charge of ICE's office in Fort Lauderdale. "These are cultural items of a country with a rich heritage."
Yeesh. Talk about a haul. . . .
astle's old fountain uncovered
Experts used a 3D laser scanner to reveal the fountain's remains
The remains of an Elizabethan fountain have been uncovered by archaeological experts in Warwickshire.
A team from Poland used a 3D laser scanner to reveal the fountain in the gardens at Kenilworth Castle.
The 16th Century fountain was part of a garden created in 1575 by Robert Dudley for Queen Elizabeth I's visit.
John Watkins, of English Heritage, said using this kind of technology would help experts reconstruct the fountain. It should be finished by spring 2007.
He said it was the first time the laser scanner had been used in garden archaeology in the UK.
That's the whole thing. Not sure how this was done. Apparently laser scanned, but not what was scanned or why it wasn't seen before.
Dig unearths 1,500 year old 'Tarbat Man'
HUMAN remains have been discovered at Portmahomack - but police will not be called in as the skeleton is thought to be around 1,500 years old and likely to be that of a Pictish monk.
The discovery was made by archaeologists from the University of York who come to the Port each season to dig in the grounds of the Tarbat Old Church, one of the most important Pictish sites in Scotland.
They are excited by the find came in the last week of the archaeological dig and means that the team will return next year in the hope of finding more archaeology.
Hmmmmmm. . . Cleopatra Found Depicted in Drag
A relief image carved approximately 2,050 years ago on an ancient Egyptian stone slab shows Cleopatra dressed as a man, according to a recent analysis of the artifact.
The object is only one of three known to exist that represent Cleopatra as a male. The other two artifacts also are stelae that date to around the same time, 51 B.C., at the beginning of Cleopatra's reign.
Researchers theorize that the recently discovered 13.4 x 9.8-inch stela probably first was excavated in Tell Moqdam, an Egyptian city that the ancient Greeks called Leonton Polis, meaning "City of the Lions."
Not all that interesting for those familiar with Egyptology, as Hatshepsut (mentioned) also portrayed herself as a male in some representations.
Czech archaeologists excavate Ancient Greek town flattened by Bohemian Celts
For twelve years, Czech archaeologists have been helping their Bulgarian colleagues in the excavations of an Ancient Greek market town in central Bulgaria. The twelve years of work has yielded valuable results, including a hoard of coins, and discovered a surprising connection between the ancient town and the Czech Lands.
The river port of Pistiros was founded in the 5th century BC by a local Thracian ruler. From the excavations we know that wine from Greece was imported to the town in large amphoras. Other pottery was found in and around the remnants of houses and also a hoard of treasure was unearthed from one of the ruins. Professor Jan Bouzek was head of the team.
e-Science? e-Science records Roman finds
Twenty first century e-Science met the ancient Roman world in a Hampshire field this summer. For the first time, archaeologists excavating at the Silchester Roman site used e-Science techniques to record their finds. The techniques will be demonstrated at the e-Science All Hands meeting in Nottingham on 20-22 September.
The archaeologists are participating in a project to build a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) that will enable geographically-dispersed researchers with an interest in the work to collaborate through on-line links. The project is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).
Silchester is one of the most important Roman sites in Britain. The town layout remains just as it was when the Romans abandoned it in the fifth century AD because nobody has built on it since. The excavations are of wide interest to Romanists throughout the UK and beyond.
This sort of thing has been going on for a while. The two problems here are using portable computers for field data collection and then making standard database designs available. The former still has a way to go, as the article mentions due to weather, sun, battery life, etc. It's difficult to imagine entering all one's field notes, drawings, etc. on todays PDAs. The other issue of common database design is also problematic, although it's used in CRM work on several levels. Academic research is probably still too disjointed theoretically for anyone to agree on exactly how data ought to be represented.
Nothing new here Farming threatens ancient Egyptian sites
Egyptian reliefs dating back thousands of years could disappear within a decade, archaeologists said on Thursday. As Egypt's population grows, agricultural land moves closer to ancient temples and funeral monuments. Water for irrigation is weakening temple foundations and eroding the carvings.
Tourists walk in Karnak temple in Luxor. (Photo KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)
"We've seen it. We have photographic evidence of something we took a picture of 10 years ago and we go and take a picture of the reliefs now and they are simply not there," said Nigel Hetherington, an archaeological conservation manager.
"What's happened is that farming land now stretches out into the desert and into (the Nile's west bank at) Luxor, which was once considered the realm of the dead in the pharaonic period," he said.
Evolutionary Tools Help Unlock Origins of Ancient Languages
The key to understanding how languages evolved may lie in their structure, not their vocabularies, a new report suggests. Findings published today in the journal Science indicate that a linguistic technique that borrows some features from evolutionary biology tools can unlock secrets of languages more than 10,000 years old.
Because vocabularies change so quickly, using them to trace how languages evolve over time can only reach back about 8,000 to 10,000 years. To study tongues from the Pleistocene, the period between 1.8 million and 10,000 years ago, Michael Dunn and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics developed a computer program that analyzes language based on how words relate to one another.
EEF news posted later, along with a few more tidbits.