Stone Pages Archaeo News: October 2003 Archives

October 2003 index:

1 October 2003: Dingoes descended from domestic dogs; New genetic research has shown that Australia’s wild dingoes are descended from domestic dogs introduced from South East Asia some 5,000 years ago. Additionally, the new analysis reveals only small...
: New method for dating pottery; Researchers at the University of Bristol (England) have developed the first direct method of dating ancient pottery, through analysis of animal fats preserved inside the ceramic walls. The new technique...
5 October 2003: Survey needed to save Pakistan's rock carvings; Pakistan's Water and Power Development Authority(Wapda) is reluctant to provide funds to the Federal Archaeology Department to conduct survey in Chilas, where Bhasha dam is proposed to be constructed, to...
: Important finds in Norfolk; Excavation work on the new park-and-ride site at Harford, south of Norwich (England), has revealed an insight into a rich and intriguing period of the area's ancient history. The discoveries...
: Prehistoric Long Man is only 5-century old; The origins of England's tallest chalk hill figure, the Long Man of Wilmington, have puzzled historians and archaeologists for generations. Carved into a steep slope on the South Downs in...
: Maltese cart ruts could simply be abandoned fields; The mystery of a prehistoric site cited as, variously, a launch site for little green men or the tracks leading to Atlantis, could be finally solved. Known as the Maltese...
6 October 2003: Earliest use of fire in Europe; Archaeologists in Wiltshire (England) think they may have discovered the earliest use of fire in Europe. A new report reveals details of a major archaeological discovery on the route of...
10 October 2003: Discoveries of prehistoric household items in China; Household items, including stone and bone vessels, dating back 4,000 years have been unearthed at the Xihetan Ruins, in northwest China's Gansu Province. Prof. Zhao Congcang with the Archaeology Department...
: English rock carvings discovery baffles archaeologists; The discovery of a series of mysterious rock carvings in Northern England has sparked a quest among experts to find out exactly what they are. Archaeologists from the University of...
: Ancient warrior found in Sichuan; An ancient Chinese warrior buried for more than 2,000 years has been discovered at a road renovation site in downtown Chengdu City, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province. Construction workers...
: Brush fire threatens rock art in Zimbabwe; A raging bush fire in one of Zimbabwe's national parks has destroyed vast tracts of land and sent wild animals fleeing into unprotected areas. Officials at the Matopos National Park...
: Bronze Age settlement unearthed in England; Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of a Roman road and Bronze Age settlement at a multi-million pound business and leisure park development. The dig at the 300-acre Gibfield Park site in...
: Seahenge pushes up museum costs; Plans to display half the Holme Henge (also known as Seahenge) timber circle in Lynn Museum (England) have pushed up the cost of the museum's development scheme to £1.2 million....
11 October 2003: Prehistoric finds at an US airbase in Suffolk; The skeleton of a muscular 30-year-old, who could have been an ancient Iceni warrior, was found buried face down in earth that was part of rich Fen lands (Suffolk, England)...
: Mnajdra temples in Malta threatened by landfill; Astonishment as to how anyone could consider building a landfill close to the Mnajdra temples (Malta) was expressed by Linda Eneix, the director and president of Old Temple Study Foundation...
13 October 2003: 8,000-year-old skeleton found in Florida; The young man whose bones were unearthed by a crew digging peat roamed Central Florida (USA) at about the time Egyptians were figuring out hieroglyphics, a state expert has said....
: Ancient righties; Researchers from the University of Montpellier (France) have used cave paintings as a source of base line data to indicate whether there have been changes in the frequency of left–...
: China and Japan began cultural exchanges 7,000 years ago; Prehistoric exchanges between China and Japan began about 7,000 years ago. This was the conclusion of 200 scholars and archaeologists from the two countries at a symposium convened at Beijing...
14 October 2003: Important new findings in Louisiana; Earthen mounds on an island in the cypress swamps of Lousiana (USA) are being re-evaluated by a postgraduate student from Louisiana State University. Two mounds on King George Island, on...
: Ancient heating wall found in China; Chinese archaeologists were recently surprised to find an ancient heating wall in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China which can still be used. The wall with flues for...
16 October 2003: Dump set up inside Peruvian Nazca lines; A coastal town set up a garbage dump inside Peru's mysterious Nazca Lines, sending trucks rumbling across the mysterious markings etched into the desert sands more than a millennium ago....
: 2,500-year-old grave excavated in Vietnam; Archaeologists discovered a grave dating as far back as 2,300-2,500 years ago in northern Phu Tho province (Vietnam), home to the Hung Kings of the Dong Son civilisation. The grave...
: $1,000 reward to catch vandals at Lovelock Cave; Federal officials frustrated by ongoing vandalism at the Lovelock Cave, a historic site in northern Nevada (USA), announced a $1,000 reward Saturday to help catch the crooks. The reward will...
: Fire destroys Iron Age exhibit; Museum staff are determined to rebuild a mock Iron Age building in Hertfordshire (England) which was reduced to rubble by fire. The Roundhouse at Letchworth Museum took volunteers 500 hours...
: Lasers uncover Stonehenge secrets; Using laser scanning technology to study Europe’s most famous ancient monument, a team of computer experts and archaeologists has discovered carvings of two axe heads on Stonehenge. The most hi-tech...
17 October 2003: Miami circle has been reburied; Miami Circle (USA) archaeological find has been reburied. The dig, discovered in 1998 amid much controversy, has been covered up again - possibly for years - while officials figure out...
: Britain and France in dispute over cave art; The age of the cave paintings at Chauvet, the Sistine Chapel of palaeolithic art in south eastern France, has become the subject of a war of words between British and...
: Prehistoric campgrounds found in Texas; University researchers are completing archaeological work at Natural Bridge Caverns (near San Antonio,Texas USA) after finding signs of prehistoric campgrounds and a dart point that may be up to 6,000...
: Alaskan artefacts at risk from global warming; The summer of 2003 saw the second foray of researchers from the University of Colorado (USA) onto the rapidly melting icefields and glaciers of southeast Alaska in search of sites...
: Men empowered by cattle ownership; Research into language, social organisation and cultural trends among 68 Bantu-speaking African cultures suggests that the spread of cattle in Africa caused societies to shift from female to male lines...
18 October 2003: Findings at a Prehistoric hunting camp in Scotland; A recently processed radiocarbon date shows that a prehistoric hunting camp excavated at Manor Bridge, just outside Peebles, is one of the oldest yet known in Scotland. The result shows...
: The Archaeology of World Megalithic Cultures; The University of the Aegean, Dept. of Mediterranean Studies, Laboratory of Archaeometry, announced an International conference that will take place next year in Rhodes (Greece) from 28 to 31 October...
21 October 2003: Catastrophes formed Alaska; Rather than a slow shaping over the countless eons of geological time, Alaska has been repeatedly blown apart by cataclysmic jolts that have had immediate and profound effects on the...
: The birth of modern minds; The theory that the emergence of modern Europeans was the result of a cultural Big Bang dating back 40,000 years will be challenged in a Last Word lecture in London...
22 October 2003: The oldest carved 'faces' found in Italy; A keen-eyed archaeologist claims to have found some of the oldest artwork ever - carved faces 200,000 years old. The human images were found in 2001 by Pietro Gaietto on...
: Cornish settlement and fogou for sale; Jo May, CAER's (Centre for Alternative Education and Research) founder and director is offering his property for sale. Located at the coastal village of Lamorna, South Cornwall (England), the property...
: 15,000-year-old rice found; Scientists have found the oldest known domesticated rice. The handful of 15,000-year-old burnt grains was discovered by archaeologists in Korea. Their age challenges the accepted view that rice cultivation originated...
: Work on Brazoria Woman continues; In 2001 the skull of a woman was discovered near Freeport (USA), on the coastal plains along the Gulf of Mexico. The skull was just a few feet below the...
24 October 2003: Canadian caves yield ancient artifacts; A caving expedition to the Queen Charlotte Islands (Canada) is believed to have found the base of a spear point that could represent the oldest human artifact on the British...
: Y-chromosome and the first Americans; Y-chromosome genetic markers show that people first arrived on the North American continent about 14,000 years ago, according to two papers in the American Journal of Human Genetics. This is...
: TV explanation of a Bronze Age map of the sky; A TV programme will seek to explain how a 'sky-disc' was used by the Bronze Age inhabitants of present-day Germany to map the heavens. Featuring contributions from German scholars, the...
25 October 2003: US Agents believe large boulder taken illegally; Federal agents are continuing their investigation into a large boulder on a Phoenix (Arizona, USA) man's front yard saying the rock is an artifact stolen from the Lake Pleasant area....
: Did Thera's explosion doom Minoan Crete?; For decades, scholars have debated whether the eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean more than 3,000 years ago brought about the mysterious collapse of Minoan civilization at the...
: Ancient mound under a swimming pool; Removal of an old swimming pool at the Mound House on Estero Island in South West Florida, USA, soon might lead to a rare archaeological and educational opportunity. The resulting...
: Geophysics surveys of Brodgar peninsula; For centuries scholars and antiquarians have had their own theories over the activities that once took place in Orkney’s World Heritage Site covering the Ness of Brodgar in Stenness (Scotland)....
28 October 2003: New fogou excavation in Cornwall; County Council archaeologists in Cornwall (England) began the three-week excavation of an ancient fogou in late October. The prehistoric monument, a stone-lined passage roofed with massive capstones, was recently discovered...
: Massive migration into Britain after last Ice Age; New research, based on artefact dating and ice core climate information, has shown that Britain saw a tidal wave of immigration as soon as the last Ice Age ended. The...
: Archaeologists in race to save Iron Age fort; Archaeologists face a battle against time and the elements to save the remains of a prehistoric settlement at Carghidown, near the Isle of Whithorn, Galloway, in south-west Scotland. Consisting of...
31 October 2003: Ancient Mongolian nomads had contacts with the West; A bronze mirror and a bronze plate recovered from two tomb sites in Liangcheng county (Inner Mongolia) showed a marked similarity of style with artefacts found in the hinterland of...
: Wyoming archeological site looted; The recent looting of an archaeological site in Wyoming (USA) not only robbed researchers of unknown artifacts dating back thousands of years, but it has taken a toll on both...
: Criticisms over quarrying around Thornborough henges; A TV archaeologist criticised a county council over the destruction of the landscape around one of Britain’s top prehistoric sites. Thornborough Henges, near Ripon, has the greatest concentration of late...