Archaeology News: September 26, 2011

Archaeologists are digging for artifacts in a battle-scarred and history-rich stretch of the upper Hudson River where thousands of Europeans, Americans and Native Americans fought and died during more than a century of sporadic warfare, culminating in the Americans' defeat of the British at Saratoga

Current Research at the Center for Desert Archaeology – Tracking Kayenta, Understanding SaladoA 17th century knight in full armour was spotted clattering through streets and playgrounds on Wednesday. The civil war warrior was promoting a community archaeology project which will delve into the history of Thornhill Hall, the remains of which stand in Rectory Park.

Trowels, screens, shovels, cameras and hand tools are required gear for such a dig. That means researchers from St. Cloud State University who paddled and portaged 15 miles to get to their excavation site at Knife Lake carried what they needed to survive and what they needed to uncover history.

The town of Kampsville was crawling with "arches," bronzed archaeology students in snug-fitting denim cutoffs, grubby bare feet and long hair. Each day, we'd be trundled off in beat-up school buses to a site in the middle of a sun-baked corn field. There, we learned to carefully dig for bits of pottery, stone tools, animal bones and other evidence of prehistoric human activity.Archaeologists are investigating three island groups around Britain to further understanding of why, in approximately 4,000 BC, humans altered their lifestyle from hunting and gathering to farming the land.

For a week, 32 volunteers, 11 archaeologists and two tribal representatives from Round Valley lived on the Mendocino National Forest to work on a Passport in Time (PIT) archaeology project.

University of Southampton and British School at Rome (BSR) archaeologists, working with the Italian Archaeological Superintendancy of Rome, uncovered the remains of the massive building (shipyard) close to the distinctive hexagonal basin or ‘harbour’, at the centre of the port complex.

A genetic study of a 90-year-old hair sample indicates that some These first explorers met Neanderthals and Denisovans along the way to Asia. Samples from different Aboriginal Australians suggest that looking for Denisovan DNA in Asian populations could help scientists track ancient waves of migration.

Two royal burials have been discovered at the Maya site of Nakum in Guatemala. A 1,300-year-old tomb, which had been badly damaged by rodents, had been placed on top of a 2,000-year-old tomb containing the remains of a woman ruler.

A developer has agreed not to build on an Ohlone burial site in Santa Cruz, California, after the remains of an Ohlone child were uncovered at the site last month. The land will be set aside for use by the Ohlone and the homeowners association of the new housing complex.

In Kaikoura, New Zealand, construction workers uncovered the remains of two people, along with jewelry, hand tools, and ochre. The finds will be examined by an archaeologist and the remains will be reburied.

Excavations on the Channel Islands, the Isles of Scilly, and the Outer Hebrides could tell archaeologists if Britain’s indigenous population gradually made the change to agriculture, or if colonists from Europe brought farming with them.

A man’s skeleton from the Iron Age has been unearthed in Leicestershire, England. Jermey Taylor of the University of Leicester talks about the bones in a short video by the BBC.

Colonial-era bricks and pottery have been found at a construction site in Kempsville, Virginia. “We’ve never been able to find anything. Now we know at least some of it is still here. When you think about all the development going on here today, it’s amazing that something from the 1750s is still intact,” said archaeologist Tony Smith.

The J. Paul Getty Museum will return three marble artifacts to Greece that it acquired in the 1970s.

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