U.S. Customs officials have returned to Guatemala 26 pieces of Mayan artifacts that survived the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The ancient pottery was confiscated in Miami in 1998 from Judith Ganeles and Patrick McSween of New York, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Thursday. The couple was traveling from Guatemala to New York at the time.
The artifacts were verified by art historian Carol Damian of Florida International University and sent to New York where they were stored in a vault at the World Trade Center.
They were in the vault when the twin towers were destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but workers found them unharmed in the rubble.
Another set of mystery stones. . . Mystery of stone anchors
Divers at Dunbar have turned archaeologists in a bid to unlock the past surrounding mystery stone anchors found off the local shore.
They are also hoping members of the public will help them in their quest to learn more about the maritime artefacts which they discovered six years ago while diving about a mile east of the town.
Now owned by the East Lothian Museum Service, the anchors are currently at the Chambers Street Museum Conservation Unit in Edinburgh undergoing conservation work while others are on display in the Dunbar Town House Museum.
Missing! Rare books missing from former Inca capital
About 100 books - including two priceless colonial-era tomes about Spanish conquistadors and the colonisation of the Incas - are missing from a public library in the former Inca capital of Cuzco.
Artefacts ranging from thousand-year-old textiles and ceramics to colonial-era religious paintings are often smuggled out of Peru.
The problem is exacerbated by underfunded or lax local security responsible for guarding an immense wealth of antiquities and by the appetites of unscrupulous collectors in Europe and the United States.
Whole thing, don't click.
And, um, we don't have them, in case you were wondering.
And money for another mystery Why did the Hohokam vanish? UA gets grant to find out
What happened to 40,000 people of the Hohokam culture who simply vanished from this region in less than a century in the 1400s?
The Center for Desert Archaeology has received a $200,000 National Science Foundation grant to help find an answer to that question, one that has puzzled archaeologists for many years.
William H. Doelle, president of the Tucson-based organization, said, "I don't there is one simple answer to the quetion, but this is going to be a really exciting project, and I think it will move us forward in dramatic new ways."
Archaeological evidence shows a drastic reduction in the population hereabout more than a century before such a decimation could be explained by the arrival of European explorers. With the Europeans came a variety of diseases that would prove devastating to native peoples, who had no immunity to deal with them.
Dig reveals Roman relics in town
Roman artefacts have been discovered in a new archaeological dig in the centre of Shepton Mallet.(Whole thing again)
Experts working on the largest project for 10 years in Somerset say they have found relics left behind by residents of the town nearly 2,000 years ago.
The dig is next to the site of a similar excavation in 1990 on the Fosse Lane Industrial Estate, which revealed the remains of a Roman town.
The project is being carried out before a retail unit is built on the site.
A Somerset County Council spokesperson said members of the public would be able to visit the dig on Saturday, 17 July and Saturday, 24 July.
There are also a limited number of spaces for volunteers who want to help with the excavation.
Remains found near Marineland may be part of Indian burial site
Human remains discovered near the Marineland park are believed to be from an Indian burial site, and could halt a planned expansion of the attraction and other nearby developments.
Flagler County sheriff's deputy Michael Lutz said the remains included "a couple of teeth and a piece of bone." He said a medical examiner determined the remains were not new, and were not the result of a crime.
And then they made asses of themselves Donkeys 'out of Africa'
Domesticated donkeys, like Homo sapiens, are from Africa, according to a study published on Friday in the US journal Science.
An international team of scientists compared DNA signatures from 427 farm donkeys from 52 countries with that of wild donkey populations in Southwest Asia and East Africa.
By compiling a genetic family tree, they found that the likely ancestors of domestic donkeys today were two populations of African wild asses that, like horses, were tamed about 5 000 years ago.
When they said "Get your asses out of Africa". . . . .
Colonial surgery? Skull Fragment Suggests Colonial Surgery
Archaeologists combing through a dig at historic Jamestown said they have unearthed a human skull fragment that shows markings that could bear evidence of the earliest known attempts at surgery in Colonial North America.
Two marks from a saw run along the curved top edge of the 4-by-6 inch fragment, which appears to be from bone at the back and base of the skull. Three small circular markings also seem to suggest attempts were made to drill through the bone.
"It's definitely been sawn and three times someone tried to drill a hole, perhaps in an attempt to treat an injury by relieving the pressure," Bill Kelso, head of the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project, told the Daily Press of Newport News.
"But right now it's all preliminary speculation."
"I luff gooooooooold!"
Ancient 'Bactrian gold' found in Kabul presidential palace
Local authorities have found about 20,400 pieces of an ancient Afghan treasure known as the "Bactrian gold" preserved in an underground vault at the presidential palace in Kabul despite more than two decades of civil strife, government authorities said Tuesday.
The flamboyant, intricately designed jewelry worn around the first century was first found in 1979 and temporarily housed in the Kabul Museum, but later disappeared. The pieces were worn by an ethnic group known for horseback riding, Kyodo (Japan) reports.
Archaeologists have welcomed the discovery as significant in studies of the Silk Road civilization, especially since it exemplifies the culture of the ancient Bactrian kingdom and reflects influences of Hellenism, China and Scythia.
Update on Alaskan shipwreck State waited too long to assert rights to 1929 shipwreck
The state has no rights to a sunken ship discovered off Kodiak because state lawyers waited too long to assert a claim, a federal magistrate has concluded in a dispute over the remains of the SS Aleutian, a 375-foot steamship lost 75 years ago near the town of Larson Bay.
The Aleutian sank on May 26, 1929, in 200 feet of water after hitting a submerged rock in Uyak Bay.
Divers with Shoreline Adventures LLC found the wreck in August 2002. The company claims the Aleutian is of little historic value but will be a great draw for a high-end tourist diving enterprise.
Following courtesy of the EEF.
Interview with Dr Christiana Kohler, discoverer of the Helwan tombs
Summary of previous work in Helwan up to 2002 in: Abstracts of
Papers, International Conference Origin of the State. Predynastic and
Early Dynastic Egypt (Cracow, Poland: 28th August - 1st September
2002), pp. 47-49 - 77 pp., pdf-file: 734 KB
URL: http://www.egypt.edu/pdf/adresses/archeo-nil/abstracts.pdf
"Greatness eclipsed by magnitude"
Article about Seti I who "achieved more for his country politically and
culturally than did his much more famous son Ramses II . "
Several stories on endoscopic analyses performed on a (Late period, again) mummy in Louisville, KY (US):
Scientists unraveling mysteries of mummy
Louisville Researchers Carefully Unlocking Secrets of 2,500-Year-Old Mummy
Mysterious mummy examined at Baptist East
Note: Not an artist's conception of the mummy:
And yet another mummy ANTHROPOLOGY: LIBYAN DESERT MUMMY TO BE EXAMINED IN ROME
A mummy, dating back to an unknown era, was found less than one month ago somewhere in the Libyan desert, under uncertain circumstances. It arrived in Rome today, to be examined in the laboratories of the Anthropology Museum at the 'Sapienza' university in Rome. The discovery is part of a joint Italy-Libya archaeological mission which has been going on for 50 years.
Online paper alert M. M. Bishop, The Battle of Kadesh, Part 1: The Disinformation Campaign
In this paper I attempt a translation of the first 13 lines of the record
of the battle as inscribed on the temple of Rameses II at Abu Simbel.