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Friday, July 29, 2011

Archaeology News: July 29, 2011


Humans Crowded Out Neanderthals

A swell of modern humans outnumbered Neanderthals in Europe by nearly 10 to one, forcing their extinction 40000 years ago, suggests a study of French archaeology sites.

Archaeology team returns to historic NY fort site

An archaeological team is back at a reconstructed French and Indian War fort in the Adirondacks to search for artifacts from the original fortification that was the scene of an infamous massacre.

Borders man's adventures in the archaeology trade

NOT every archaeologist could tell stories of Libyan soldiers trying to arrest them, flying with a Second World War ace pilot for work or being involved in one of the most significant Iron Age digs in Europe. Dr John Dent has retired after spending more than 21 years in local government in the Borders.

Museum offers a week of archaeology

The Connecticut State Museum of Natural History, part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UConn, will conduct it's fifth Annual Archaeology Field School Monday, Aug. 15 through Friday, Aug. 19, 9 am to 3 pm.

Annual Archaeology Day set for Aug. 6 at Cahokia Mounds

The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site in Collinsville will hold its fifth annual Archaeology Day next week. The event, which is sponsored by the Cahokia Archaeological Society, will be held from 10 am to 4 pm Aug 6. It is free and open to the public.

Sapphire ring 'belonged to Anglo-Saxon or Viking royalty'

By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent A unique gold and sapphire finger ring, found by a metal detectorist and just purchased by the Yorkshire Museum, almost certainly belonged to Anglo-Saxon or Viking royalty.

Archaeology Dig For Youth of Oneida Indian Nation

By The Post-Standard The Nation's Youth Work/Learn Program, for more than 12 years, has given participants in the program an opportunity to learn about their past through this hands on experience - the annual Youth Archaeology Dig.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Archaeology News: July 2011


Ancient City Mysteriously Survived Mideast Civilization Collapse

As ancient civilizations across the Middle East collapsed, possibly in response to a global drought about 4,200 years ago, archaeologists have discovered that one settlement in Syria not only survived, but expanded. Their next question is — why did Tell Qarqur, a site in northwest Syria, grow at a time when cities across the Middle East were being abandoned?

photo © Tell Qarqur Expedition

Ancient Sacrificer Found With Blades in Peru Tomb?

With ancient ceremonial knives at his side, an elite 14th-century executioner—a key player in human-sacrifice rituals—has been uncovered in a tomb at a pre-Inca site in Peru, archaeologists suggest.

USS SCORPION Project 2011 Day by Day: Week Three | Naval History Blog

Today, we were back in the Patuxent trenches continuing our efforts to delineate the boundaries of the suspected USS Scorpion wreck. So far, the team has been successful in uncovering ship timbers in test units placed on the upstream and downstream extremities of the site.

Holy Apocalypto: Ancient War Resulted in ... Civilization? UCLA Researchers Say Hooah to That

Research suggests that ancient battles of the Apocalypto variety might have spawned the earliest vestiges of civilization, namely buildings, religions and political systems.

What’s lurking under our heels in Heeley?

Heeley City Farm and Sheffield University are inviting families to take part in an archaeological project to uncover Heeley’s past.

Rebuilding Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas

German art historian Bert Praxenthaler continues the quest to rebuild Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Buddhas, destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. He says that up to half of the pieces of the statues have been recovered from the rubble.

Ancient City Mysteriously Survived Mideast Civilization Collapse

As ancient civilizations across the Middle East collapsed, possibly in response to a global drought about 4,200 years ago, archaeologists have discovered that one settlement in Syria not only survived, but expanded. Their next question is — why did Tell Qarqur, a site in northwest Syria, grow at a time when cities across the Middle East were being abandoned?

Who dug the Erdstalls of southern Germany?

Who dug the Erdstalls of southern Germany and why? These narrow dirt tunnels and galleries are thought by some to the homes of elves, gnomes, or spirits. Archivist Josef Weichenberger thinks they were medieval hiding places.

Heritage and conservation: Poor restoration practices ‘ruin monuments’

Participants at the seminar, Heritage Preservation in Pakistan- International Principles and Practices, discussed the collective responsibility to preserve social heritage.

Children’s archaeology dig at Pascack Museum

Volunteers at the Pascack Historical Society Museum, 19 Ridge Avenue, Park Ridge, are sprucing up their two raised archeology beds in their museum’s backyard in anticipation of "Stones & Bones," a children’s archaeological dig for grades two through six, scheduled for Thursday, Aug. 25 from 10 .a.m. to 1 p.m.

Time team dig up the dirt: experts push back origins of farming in city’s history

ARCHAEOLOGISTS working at a Sheffield farm have dug up a mystery – the remains of a settlement which could date back 8,000 years to the Iron Age.

Isle of Wight's sunken World War II tanks studied

Maritime archaeologists have investigated ways for World War II tanks at the bottom of the sea near the Isle of Wight to be protected.

Archaeologists search for lost graves at Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site

Archaeologists from The University of Western Ontario and the Ontario Heritage Trust will begin to search for unmarked graves at Uncle Tom’s Cabin Historic Site in Dresden.

Shower of eggs greets Moscow's chief archaeologist

Leonid Kondrashev, Moscow’s chief archeologist, had an unwelcome start to his new job when he was pelted with eggs and mayonnaise by angry political protestors on Triumfalnaya Ploshchad on Thursday.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Archaeology News: July 28, 2011


Dioramas, Ruin and Archaeology

A closer look at Lori Nix's website reveals a play on the photographic trope of ruin, something very much prevalent in the photography of archaeology.

Did warfare fuel the birth of advanced civilization?

For six centuries beginning around 500 BCE, ancient Peru was ravaged by nearly constant war. But the end result might almost have been worth it: that war seems to have been the driving force for the region's first complex civilization.

Real or fake?

The Holy Land is one of the homes of archaeology. Indeed for years, one of the main purposes of the science was to search for tangible evidence that would prove the truth of the stories of the Bible. And there has always been money in it too. ...

Digging up evidence of 12th century life in Ewyas Harold and Dulas Court

The Ewyas Harold Archaeology and History Group started work last weekend after a gravel bank and 15th century pavement were uncovered last year. Members believe a priory was established in 1130 in a field just north of Ewyas Harold.

3,500-year-old ancient treasure unearthed in Turkey

The return of a 3,500-year-old sphinx statue to Anatolia and the excavation of a 2,000-year-old racing arena in Muğla this week are part of the ongoing preservation of Turkey's rich history. Almost 4,000 years old and standing 2.8 meters tall, the sphinx originally stood on the right side of the south gate of Hattuşa, once the capital of the ancient Hittites.

Xanthos excavations turned over to Turkish archaeologists

A Turkish archaeology team has taken over excavations in the ancient city of Xanthos due to the slow progress under the guidance of French teams. The ancient site has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1988.

The Pre-Clovis Debra L. Friedkin site

Butter Milk Creek is a Texas archaeological site and an archaeological complex located rather symbolically a couple of hundred miles downstream from the famous Clovis site in New Mexico. It is the most recently reported alleged manifestation of a "pre-Clovis" archaeological presence.

Mexican Archaeologists Find 2,800-Year-Old Monument

A group of Mexican archaeologists have discovered a 1.5 ton stone relief from the Olmec culture created more than 2,800 years ago.

CEBA presents the Kanab Archaeology Symposium highlighting the Jackson Flat Reservoir Project

The Center for Education, Business and Arts (CEBA) presents the Kanab Archaeology Community Symposium, a free program, on August 10, at 7:30 p.m. at Southwest Applied Technology College, 690 South Cowboy Way (across the street from Kanab Middle School.)

Third bone site in Oak Harbor acknowledged, city cleared of wrongdoing

State state regulators have begun an investigation this week into a third site that might contain Native American remains.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Excavations at Attirampakkam in India Reveal An Amazing Prehistoric Past


Leave it up to timing as the topics of my recent studies seem to all fall into the subject of Indian history.

In my Archaeology of Sex class, I'm reading about women in India. I just recently published my ethnography with Artira Dutta, and now, the discovery of stone tools dating to 1.5 million years ago have been discovered in India.

The excavations took place at a prehistoric site near Chennai and may change how we look at the evolutionary patterns of humans from Africa to India.

Stone hand-axes and cleavers from Attirampakkam have been dated to at least 1.07 million years old using two dating methods including Cosmogenic nuclide burial dating.

12 years of painstaking work The extensive excavations at Attirampakkam have brought to light a deep stratified sequences of occupation by prehistoric populations.

The excavations at Attirampakkam show a deeply stratified sequence of occupation.The Tamil Nadu site was first discovered in 1863 by British geologist Robert Bruce Foote, and has been excavated at various times since then.

Archaeologists Shanti Pappu and Kumar Akhilesh from the Sharma Centre for Heritage Education have spent the last 12 years continuing to excavate the site and have now found 3,528 artefacts that bear a distinct similarity to prehistoric tools discovered in western Asia and Africa.

The tools fall into a class of artefacts called Acheulian that scientists believe were first created by Homo erectus – ancestors of modern humans – in Africa about 1.6 million years ago.

Read the Full story about The 1.5 Stone Tools Discovered in India @ Past Horizons

Picture ©  Sharma Centre for Heritage Education, India

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Archaeology Dig At Brisbane's City Hall Reveals Pioneering Treasure


Archaeologist Phillip Habgood explains his surprise, when excavating below the city hall in Brisbane, turned up some 19th century treasure. Evidence of horse stables and a street have been excavated at the archaeology site that date to the 1850's. The findings are being deemed the most significant archaeological find in the city's history.

At the present time, the city hall in Brisbane is undergoing restoration work so archaeologists were brought in as part of the $215 million refurbishment. Students from University of Queensland are assisting archaeologists with the excavation and have "uncovered an intact drain, building roofs, old horse shoes and bottles".

Archaeologist Phil Habgood said details of the city's past spanning as much as 80 years, up until City Hall was built in 1930, could lie underneath the historic building."We've got evidence of corrugated iron buildings [underneath City Hall]," he said."The buildings were made from porphyry [stone] then they added concrete and bitumen throughout the area. We think there's probably a large 1850-60s stone drain.

The Brisbane Lord Mayor, Campbell Newman, calls it "a sensational find".

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Forts, or rather Fortifications in Florida


I went on a huge manhunt today, looking for another site to explore nearby, but I failed miserably. Instead , I found myself at the local library reading about the forts I can't find.

Do you really want to know what started all of this?


When I was about 10 years old, my mother brought me to the Castillo de San Marco's in Saint Augustine where I found myself crawling on my knees into the dungeon that was sealed up for 100 years, only to be opened up by American soldiers in 1819. Really Creepy! It was this fortification that made me love Archaeology.

So today, I thought it would be a great idea to embark on a new location, but like I said, I couldn't find one nearby. Even the ones that I did find were virtually impossible to navigate or the remnants of the structures were completely gone, so I would have needed a land surveyor or historian with me to know what is was I was looking at.

I even rummaged through Wikipedia pages and couldn't find one that had any information. And when I say no information, the page was empty. What happened and why are these places not being excavated?

Your thoughts on this?

Read more about the Castillo de San Marco's

Florida Forts

Friday, August 21, 2009

What's Underneath? Why Archaeologists study what's already been discovered


During a late breakfast with my fiance today he asked me a question that's been lingering in my mind all day long. At least until 1:00 am when I started writing this.

Archaeologists go to school for years, pick a topic like the pyramids or Greek architecture, and then focus their studies on those structures that have been studied and researched so many times before.

I'm not saying that all archaeologists follow this path, but what I am saying is that many don't take chances, therefore they hide behind a desk reading about another persons discovery and say to themselves, 'I want to do that too".

So when do you start to think about what actually exists beneath the structures that have already been discovered? When do you start asking questions about what was there before and how can you find that information out?

Of course, as everyone already knows, I am in the beginning stages of my life in Archaeology. However, I think what made me a bit concerned about my direction was when I told my fiance that there was nothing interesting to study here in Florida. I though my attitude was a bit short-sided and I had to check myself for a moment.

Then I started to think about the surrounding areas and the parks that I often visit with my dogs when I go hiking. I started to dig deeper and what I found was truly astounding. I found no records or information about a certain natural springs park I visit quite often and I wondered what was there before.

Isn't it a fact that early civilizations made their homes near fresh water, mainly for trade purposes, transportation routes, and of course food? So if this spring had been running for hundreds of years, why was there so little information about it?

Once I get to the bottom of my discovery, I will surely share it with all of you.

The moral of this rant, so to speak, is that you have to take the structures you see everyday and start asking questions. What was there before?

The most interesting aspect about Archaeology is new discoveries, so if you're not getting dirty, your not working hard enough to uncover the secrets left all over the world.

Here are some areas that need some more attention.

Bosnian Pyramids




Were they the first and are they larger than the Egyptian pyramids?

Amerigo Vespucci



Who really discovered the New World?

Woolly Mammoth


Cold climate animals or did they originally live in warmer areas of the world?

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