Archaeology News

Archaeologists digging under Lincoln Castle have made contact with the remains of a previously unknown church that is at least 1,000 years old.

The earliest find was a cemetery with several skeletons, associated with the remains of two stone walls. Further investigation revealed more burials, including at least one stone coffin. As explorations continue, it seems that the remains all belong to a stone church built after the Romans left and before the Norman conquerors came. During this period the English and the Danes competed for supremacy in Northern England.

An early start and a short hike saw me on top of East Lomond Hill just as the sun began to rise, ready to get some kite aerial shots. Approaching the distinctive profile of the hill - which can be seen right across Fife and a good distance beyond - I could see wisps of cloud forming off of the hilltop, visible in this photo.

The city of Amarna was a 17 year period of change and drama in Egypt's ancient history. It was established as the capital city of Egypt in 1353 BC during the late 18th dynasty by Pharaoh Akhenaten....

A major Mayan Monument had been bulldozed for roadfill aggregate. 7news went to Orange Walk District, near the northern district boundary to find out that Noh Mul – or at least a large part of it – is no more. Jules Vasquez reports.

An extraordinary voyage through mythical China is offered to visitors of Paris’s Guimet Museum in a rare collection of ancient China bronzes.

The Nazi burning of books considered "Un-German" is only one of many historical examples of culture coming under attack.

The cause of the Justinianic Plague appears to be settled through new DNA evidence.

 

Plague is a fatal disease so infamous that it has become synonymous with any dangerous, widespread contagion. It was linked to one of the first known examples of biological warfare, when Mongols catapulted plague victims into cities.

The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, has been linked with at least two of the most devastating pandemics in recorded history. One, the Great Plague, which lasted from the 14th to 17th centuries, included the infamous epidemic known as the Black Death, which may have killed nearly two-thirds of Europe in the mid-1300s. Another, the Modern Plague, struck around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, beginning in China in the mid-1800s and spreading to Africa, the Americas, Australia, Europe and other parts of Asia.

Once upon a time in the back garden, I started to do some archaeological grain processing experiments. It was the summer of 1995. I'd just finished an archaeology degree. Now I was enrolled on a master's degree course at Manchester University and I was beginning my investigations into how people may have made the ale in prehistory. 

In my final year as an undergraduate, I had chosen the British Neolithic and Bronze Age as my specialist subject. We were told that, in Bronze Age Britain- Beakers were for Beer! Warriors buried with wristguards and bows and arrows and fine beaker pots for their ale! It got a laugh from the class, as any mention of beer and brewing seems to do.I'm still not sure why - but that was when I first began to wonder. "OK. So, how did they make it?" 

Being married to a craft brewer, I was used to living in a brew house. The sacks of crushed malt. The delicious aroma of the mash. The rituals. The water and wort spilled on the kitchen floor. Steam emanating from the out house door as he mashed the malt and boiled the wort. We lived in a big, old Victorian house and the dining room was where the beer was fermented. We had a cellar to keep it in. He would bring a sack of crushed malt in through the front door and transform it into beer. It was very good beer. It was a fairly simple process.

Uruk, in modern-day Iraq, is one of the first cities in the world and was populated almost without interruption for over 5,000 years – from the 4th millennium BC to the 1st millennium AD.

The city is famous for the invention of cuneiform writing at the end of the 4th millennium, in  the “late Uruk period”. During this creative flourishing the city already covered an area of 2.5 square kilometres and many distinctive architectural features were invented and developed.

Geologists have announced the discovery of what has been dubbed the 'Brazilian Atlantis', some 900 miles from Rio.

From the elegant silhouette on the tails of the national airline fleet to the overstuffed animals perched atop the Post Office roundabout...

The ancient Minoans were genetically European, DNA study reveals.

The eastern “panhandle” of the kingdom of Jordan is partly covered by a vast and rugged lava desert, the Harrat, covering about ca. 11.400 km2 (Fig. 1). Scoured by wind in winter and scorched dry by the sun in summer, the surface is covered by black basalt stones, making this area seem as uninviting, hostile and inaccessible as is imaginable.

Nevertheless this modern day desolate desert proves to be as rich in archaeological heritage as one may wish.

More than a thousand flint tools and waste generated on during their treatment were discovered near Pietrowice Wielkie (Silesia) by archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Wrocław - told PAP head researcher Dr. Andrzej Wiśniewski.

The flint workshops, remains of which were found by archaeologists, had been used by Neanderthals. The researchers are waiting for more detailed information on the site dating. The workshop is certainly more than 45 thousand years old.

"Tools were made by a specific canon of Neanderthals living in Central Europe. These items have a cutting edge on both sides, they are bifacial" - said Dr. Wiśniewski.

A major Mayan Monument had been bulldozed for roadfill aggregate. 7news went to Orange Walk District, near the northern district boundary to find out that Noh Mul – or at least a large part of it – is no more. It’s a stunning development – and Jules Vasquez reports.

 

Jules Vasquez reporting
Noh Mul. it’s name means the Big Hill but it’s not so big any more, this once towering and stout ceremonial center in San Jose/San Pablo has been whittled down to a narrow core by excavators and bulldozers. Whodunnit? Contractors who’re using the rich gravel and limestone content to fill roads in nearby Douglas Village.

 

Now, this was the main temple, the ceremonial center for Noh Mul, at about 20 metres among the tallest buildings in Northern Belize - and it’s not centuries old, it’s millennia, thousands of years old and the thought that it’s rich limestone bricks cut with stone tools in the BC era, the thought that this could be used for road fill is a manifest outrage and a particularly painful one for these Archeologists who were called out to the area today. We were there when they first arrived and got their initial emotional reaction:

 

Dr. Allan Moore - Archaeologist, Institute of Archaeology
"This is one of the largest bulding in Norther Belize. I am appalled! I was hoping that when I was driving up from the main San Juan road that it would not be this one but when I got closer I couldn't believe it when I saw all the trucks. This is an incredible destruction."

The Carmona necropolis (Spain) is a collection of funeral structures from between the 1st century B.C. and the 2nd century A.D. One of these is known as the Elephant’s Tomb because a statue in the shape of an elephant was found in the interior of the structure.

LOUISBOURG — A team of underwater archeologists is diving to the remains of 18th-century French warships that were sunk during the second siege of Louisbourg in 1758.

This past Tuesday I had the pleasure of attending Anthony Bourdain’s Guts and Glory tour, his first live tour that consists of 75 minutes of fantastic food and travel rants. Throughout his expletive filled diatribe, he emphasized that food is the way to reach other cultures. Food is a primary way that people express their past and present, it is an amalgamation of their historical roots and current living conditions. Through food we create and maintain ties to one another. It is important, in fact it is fundamental to survival. Most importantly to Bourdain, it is a way to learn and connect with other cultures, and through eating he has been able to reach the intimate and cultural side of society throughout the world.

Marine paleoecologist Marco Coolen from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was examining vast amounts of genetic data from the Black Sea sediment record. He was astonished by the variety of past plankton species that left behind their genetic makeup (i.e., the plankton paleome).

The semi-isolated Black Sea is highly sensitive to climate driven environmental changes, and the underlying sediments represent high-resolution archives of past continental climate and concurrent hydrologic changes in the basin. The brackish Black Sea is currently receiving salty Mediterranean waters via the narrow Strait of Bosphorus as well as freshwater from rivers and via precipitation.