AN ancient Roman road that connected London to Essex has been discovered during regeneration work on the Beaumont Estate, Leyton.
The well-preserved find has caused a storm among archaeologists and it is hoped the underground discovery, off Capworth Street, will give clues to the level of traffic between London and Chelmsford during the Roman era.
Work to redevelop the estate has halted for a few days to allow a detailed examination of the road which is six metres wide, raised a metre off the ground and has a two-metre-wide ditch on either side.
Archaeologists are hoping to find objects that had fell off the back of carts travelling on the road.
Update: More from The Independent.
Rare artifacts shed new light on Spanish outpost in Panhandle
A flood of rare artifacts and the rotted remains of wooden buildings offer surprising insights into life at a Spanish presidio, or military outpost, that vanished under the shifting sands of this barrier island 250 years ago.
University of West Florida archaeologists and students, aided by public volunteers, last year recovered more than 40,000 artifacts, and they are digging up more this summer.
What they've found shows Presidio Isla de Santa Rosa was more than a typical military and penal colony. Family life also thrived there.
"The numbers are incredible," said Judy Bense, director of West Florida's Archaeology Institute. "Not only that, what we're finding are things that we don't usually find."
Applied archaeology: WWII Aviation archaeologists bring closure to war widows
It was a wintry Chicago night when Loretta Kreft's landlady telephoned the defense plant where she worked and asked her to come home. A telegram had arrived from the War Department -- and during World War II, that could only mean bad news.
When Kreft arrived at her boarding house, the woman dug her hand in an apron pocket and pulled out the yellow envelope.
The telegram was terse. Earlier that day -- Jan. 30, 1945 -- her husband, Technical Sgt. Harvey Cook, and three other airmen died when their B-24L Liberator crashed and burned in the Mojave Desert, not far from the Army airfield in Victorville, Calif., where they were stationed.
Nice story. Archaeology is usually kind of cut off from society at large except in an educational sense, so it's a good thing when we can actually apply our skills (though to be honest, one might question whether this is "real" archaeology" or archaeologists) to current problems. Good read. Check out the web site linked in the story as well.
The other area archys usually can assist is modern forensic cases, though we are unsure how many archaeologists are actually working in forensics (our sense is that usually the crime scene police units take care of any excavation).
Important story Stop the Rot: Museum Storage & the Destruction of Archaeological Collections
A well-known English Egyptologist, when recently asked by an admirer whether he still excavated, replied ‘not any longer - only museum basements.’ An article by Rachel Horowitz in the 22 March 2004 Daily Pennsylvanian underlines the great problem confronting so many academic institutions and museums that have conducted excavations over the past century and more - the dilemma of properly cataloguing, publishing, displaying, and perhaps disseminating part of the millions of objects stored away in their basements and warehouses.
We keep bringing this subject up because we think it is important that archaeologists begin to address it. For example, Every excavation of complex civilization produces mountains of ceramics in the form of broken up pot-sherds ("pot-shards" or usually just "sherds" to the initiated) that are, generally, analytically useless. Archaeologists mostly use the rims and bases of pottery vessels for analysis, or whole/reconstructable vessels; the vast remainders ("body sherds") are difficult to work with and are discarded in the tens of thousands.
As a profession, we need to start thinking about our methods with a view to the long term. In a sense, we must think of ourselves as archaeological agents, since we are responsible for removing, transporting, discarding, and preserving (or not) artifacts. In this respect we are really little different from other agents, both natural and cultural, that act to distribute and differentially destroy the archaeological record.
Excavations in Paphos hope to uncover treasures of the past
EXCAVATIONS are underway on an island off the coast of Ayios Georgios tis Peyias in the Paphos district, conducted by the New York University.
In 1982, extensive archaeological remains discovered led to the expropriation of the island as important resource for the cultural heritage of Cyprus. Paphos served as the island’s capital during the Hellenistic period (323-30 BC).
Work began on May 17 in the area along the southern coast of the island, designated as the Central South Complex. All trenches excavated in this area during the 1992-1996 seasons were un backfilled and all remaining baulks were removed.
A continuous ground plan of the Central South Complex can now be observed. It shows a series of roughly square rooms and an open courtyard stretching across an area measuring 19.5 by 14 metres.
Check out Cypriot archaeology wherever you can find it. It's some fascinating stuff and aesthetically somewhat unique from contemporary Greek stuff, though similar in many ways.