THE whereabouts of a medieval hospital in Peterborough still remains a mystery after an archaeological dig failed to unearth any clues.
A team from York Archaeological Trust (YAT) were commissioned to investigate the Westgate area of Peterborough city centre ahead of the the proposed £400 million North Westgate development.
At the opening of the first trench last month, city archaeologist Ben Robinson, who is based at Peterborough Museum, hoped to find the remains of a medieval hospital.
He explained that archaeologists know of a medieval hospital in the Westgate area of Peterborough, but aren't sure of its exact location.
Bummer.
Homo britannicus update Bio-archaeologists Pinpoint Oldest Northern European Human Activity
Scientists at the University of York used a 'protein time capsule' to confirm the earliest record of human activity in Northern Europe.
A team of bio-archaeologists from York were able to provide the final piece of scientific evidence which confirmed that primitive stone tools discovered in East Anglia dated back around 700,000 years – 200,000 years earlier than any other traces of human colonisation of northern latitudes.
Dr Kirsty Penkman and Dr Matthew Collins were part of an international team, headed by the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project, which studied the worked flint flakes discovered two years ago in a cliff at Pakefield near Lowestoft, Suffolk.
New bit: A direct dating technique for shells found in context with the tools (amino acid racemization?).
Treasure! Ancient treasure unearthed in Shaanxi
Archaeologists have recently excavated cultural relics from several ancient grave pits in Hancheng city in northwestern China's Shaanxi province. The relics date back to Zhou dynasty about 3,000 years ago.
The articles unearthed include over 600 items of bronze ware, as well as some rare gold articles and lacquer ware.
Archaeologists say the finds are of great significance for research into the political and economic systems and funerary customs of the Zhou Dynasty.
That's the whole thing.
More treasure! (Real this time) Devon treasure hunters strike a rich seam
This is the hoard of treasure dug up around Devon - and it's set to earn a windfall for the metal detector enthusiasts who found it.
The Viking gold ingot, silver gilt dress hook, silver huntsman's whistle and medieval gold and sapphire ring have all been officially declared treasure and have become the property of the Crown.
The finders will now be rewarded for handing over the items at 'market value', which has yet to be decided. The Viking cast gold ingot, found in Wembury, was said to be particularly rare.
Syrian warfare update Earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world
A huge battle destroyed one of the world's earliest cities at around 3500 B.C. and left behind, preserved in their places, artifacts from daily life in an urban settlement in upper Mesopotamia, according to a joint announcement from the University of Chicago and the Department of Antiquities in Syria.
"The whole area of our most recent excavation was a war zone," said Clemens Reichel, Research Associate at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Reichel, the American co-director of the Syrian-American Archaeological Expedition to Hamoukar, lead a team that spent October and November at the site. Salam al-Quntar of the Syrian Department of Antiquities and Cambridge University was Syrian co-director. Hamoukar is an ancient site in extreme northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border.
The discovery provides the earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world, the team said.
The team found extensive destruction with collapsed walls, which had undergone heavy bombardment by sling bullets and eventually collapsed in an ensuing fire. Work during an earlier season showed the settlement was protected by a 10-foot high mud-brick wall.
And some from the WaPo.
Robots in the Great Pyramid! News on the Robot and the Secret Doors inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu
It's a blurb by Zahi Hawass on what's been done with robots sent into the "air shafts" in the GP. Nothing really new but it's got some nice pictures.
Dead Sea anchors were carefully designed
Two remarkably well-preserved wooden anchors more than two millennia old, discovered recently on the shores of the Dead Sea, are now on view opposite the book shop at the Israel Museum, on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Over the last few decades, Israel's diversion of water from Lake Kinneret into the national water carrier has caused the progressive drop in the level of the Dead Sea, reducing its size by nearly half. The receding waters uncovered the two wooden anchors, which were spotted by archaeologist Dr. Gideon Hadas during a stroll along the shore.
The first anchor, approximately 2,500 years old, was found where the Ein Gedi harbor was once located, and may have been used by the Jews of biblical Ein Gedi. The later anchor, some 2,000 years old, was constructed according to the best Roman technology and probably belonged to a large craft used by one of the rulers of Judea. As the sea recedes further, we may yet get to see the ship to which this anchor belonged.
Actually very cool.
‘Incredible’ Pyrgos discoveries
DISCOVERIES at the ancient site of Pyrgos Mavroraki, near Limassol, are revolutionising knowledge of the Bronze Age and have been described as ‘incredible’ by the archaeologist carrying out the work.
Maria Rosaria Belgiorno says that Pyrgos is probably the most important ancient site yet found in Cyprus and has produced evidence for the first time that olive oil was used as a fuel in copper production.
Belgiorno told a meeting in Nicosia that four different architectural units had been uncovered during five seasons of excavations at Pyrgos/Mavroraki, a site that spans the period from around 2350BC to 1850BC.
The site, Belgiorno said, was an industrial complex producing luxury items such as perfumes and textiles dyed with purple and blue indigo.
Very nice smelting and casting site apparently.
Remote sensing update 3D Images Give New Life to Old Shipwrecks
It's no nightingale, but a new seismic technology nicknamed Chirp is making music for the ears of archaeologists interested in the wrecks of sunken ships.
Named for the bird-like blips it makes in action, GeoChirp 3-D is able to generate three-dimensional images of just about anything lying beneath the seafloor, including shipwrecks hidden under years of muck and sand build-up.
Chirp is "a seismic system that works by firing sound waves at the seafloor and measuring the reflections as they bounce back from objects and different rock layers in the seabed," writes the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in a recent edition of their quarterly publication Newsline.
Unlike the traditional two-dimensional method of slicing the seabed vertically from the top down, Chirp produces a cube of information.