Stone Pages Archaeo News: March 2009 Archives

March 2009 index:

10 March 2009: Knowth damaged in ancient times by early 'vandals'; Irish archaeologists excavating a prehistoric tomb north of Dublin have discovered that ancient 'vandals' left graffiti on the stonework, Environment Minister John Gormley said. Scientists have been working for almost...
: Discovery of 6000-year-old artefacts in Iran; Archaeologists reported the conclusion of the season of archaeological survey at Mīyān-Rūd Tappeh in Iraj area, of Rāmjerd, in the town of Marvdasht (Fārs Province, Iran). This survey was conducted...
: Experts try to decipher ancient Iberian language; When archaeologists on a dig in southern Portugal last year flipped over a heavy chunk of slate and saw writing not used for more than 2,500 years, they were elated....
: Bronze Age pottery kiln identified in the Burnt City; During the stratigraphical study conducted on Teppeh-Dasht archaeological site located 3 kilometres away from Burnt City in Sistan-va-Baluchestan Province (Iran), archaeologists have identified a 5000-years-old pottery kiln. "Current evidences verify...
: Bronze Age seal discovered in Abu Dhabi; A team working for the Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD) has found an ancient stone cylinder seal dating back to the beginning of the local Bronze Age, around 5,000...
: Ancient hunting techniques revealed; How did humans living in the third millennium BCE manage to find sufficient quantities of meat in the arid desert regions? A new study of the 'desert kites' that are...
: Axe handles dredged from North Sea win archaeology award; Prehistoric hand axes discovered in sand and gravel dredged from the North Sea by Hanson Aggregates Marine, have won the Best Archaeological Discovery Award at the prestigious British Archaeology Awards....
: Ancient site in Utah may be replaced by a rail hub; A railside development could rob Utahns of a full understanding of their state's ancient past if the Legislature allows construction on the site of a buried village in Draper (Utah,...
: Remains from Clovis culture cast doubt on comet theory; The idea that a comet blasted into eastern North America about 10,900 years ago has been receiving a lot of media attention lately. The explosion, which is said to have...
: Harappan-era cemetery found; A big housing complex dating back from the Harappan era has been discovered in a little known village about 40 km from Rohtak (Haryana state of India). A cemetery belonging...
: Lough Gur proposed for heritage status; Lough Gur, one of Europe's most important archaeological sites and located in Co Limerick (Ireland), could soon be awarded world heritage status. Ireland boasts two listed world heritage sites: Skellig...
: Neolithic seal found in Iran; Archeologists have unearthed an ancient cylinder seal dating to at least 3,500 years ago in Iran's northern Mazandaran Province. Archeological excavations at the Kelar Mound in the north of Iran...
: Earliest known domestic horses found in Kazakhstan; An international team of archaeologists has uncovered the earliest known evidence of horses being domesticated by humans. The discovery suggests that horses were both ridden and milked. The findings could...
: 4,000-year-old axe unearthed in London; A flint axe over 4,000 years old was the highlight of a crop of discoveries during a two-year archaeological investigation into the past of the Olympic Park in London (England)....
: Online users now can virtually tour Oetzi's body; A Stone Age warrior frozen in an icy tomb for 5,300 years can now be viewed in astonishing detail thanks to a new website. The Iceman photoscan project took 150,000...
16 March 2009: Anglesey rock-art project field school and excavation; From 18th to 22nd June 2009 Archaeology Safaris Ltd. will organize a 4-day Rock-Art Project Field School and Excavation in Anglesey (Wales). For the students taking part there will be...
: An enigmatic T-shaped mound in Louisiana; About 3,300 years ago, a group of archaic period Native Americans living in what is now northeast Louisiana (USA) decided to build a great mound. Ninety days after the project...
: Iran urbanized 4,500 years ago; Archeological studies have indicated that traces of ancient population in Iran's northern province of Mazandaran goes back 5,600 years. "Archeological excavations and precise date recognition at the historical site of...
: 70,000-year-old findings unearthed in Orissa; In a major breakthrough, researchers from Sambalpur University recently discovered the cultural remains of a civilisation that is supposed to be more than 70,000 years old. The discovery was made...
: Stone Age sandal found in Lake Constance; A woven sandal - last worn 4,900 years ago - has been discovered in Lake Constance in southern Germany. The well-preserved shoe, dating back to the Stone Age, is of...
: Prehistoric humans hunkered at Meadowcroft in Pennsylvania; Meadowcroft rock shelter (Pennsylvania) is the oldest known site of human habitation in North America, at least 16,000 years old. Its 52 carbon dates, in almost perfect stratigraphic order, reflect...
: German authorities let 7,000-year-old boats rot away; A pair of stone-age boats, thought to be the oldest in Europe, have been allowed to rot in a partially collapsed shed while the northern German regional archaeology authorities stood...
: Ancient artifacts excavated in Vietnamese cave; Archaeologists from the Hoa Binh Museum and the Southeast Asia Prehisory Centre (Vietnam) have found more than 4,000 ancient artifacts of stone and bone at the Xom Trai archaeological site...
: Iron Age reconstruction underway in Shropshire; Park Hall Countryside Experience, located near Oswestry (Shropshire, England), is undertaking a major new project for 2009 with the reconstruction of an Iron Age roundhouse built using traditional methods by...
: Priorities for the conservation of the Côa Valley rock art; The Côa Valley in north-eastern Portugal is one of the most significant prehistoric open-air rock art sites in the world. The majority of engraved motifs has reliably been dated to...
21 March 2009: Bronze Age burial site damaged by Scottish Police; Police officers in northern Scotland have been accused of vandalising a Bronze Age site through ignorance after they removed bones and textiles from a 4,000-year-old burial chamber, apparently because they...
: 6,000-year old cave paintings found in Peru; More than 10,000 cave paintings - dating back to more than 6,000 years - were discovered by Peruvian archaeologist Quirino Olivera in the Andean country's jungle department of Amazonas. Hidden...
: New technology for dating ancient rock paintings; A new dating method finally is allowing archaeologists to incorporate rock paintings into the tapestry of evidence used to study life in prehistoric times. In the study, Marvin W. Rowe...
: Walkers are dismantling ancient Yorkshire cairns; British walkers are destroying priceless historic sites - to build hilltop cairns - and now a national park authority has pleaded to visitors to stop the custom to preserve structures...
: Rare Iron Age bowls unearthed in Wales; Rare Iron Age artefacts buried as part of a religious offering have been unearthed by an amateur treasure hunter. Two bronze bowls and a bronze wine strainer, described by an...
: 4,000-year-old 'Abraham's Gate' reopened to public; The Nature and National Parks Protection Authority opened 'Abraham's Gate' at Tel Dan (Israel), for visits by the public. The ancient structure from the Canaanite period of the Bronze Age...
: Underwater excavations of a Turkish prehistoric settlement; Archaeologists announced they have begun underwater excavations of the prehistoric site of Limantepe in western Turkey. The underwater research, headed by Professor Hayat Erkanal of the Archaeology Department of the...
: A brief history of Stonehenge theories; With March 20 marking the vernal equinox attention turns again to one of the more persistent theories for Stonehenge's origin. In a 1965 book, 'Stonehenge Decoded,' astronomer Gerald Hawkins offered...
: Reprint of Xewkija temple report; A limited facsimile edition of Fr Emmanuel Magri's, 'Ruins of a Megalithic Temple at Xeuchia, First Report', is being published by the Salesians of Don Bosco and Heritage Malta as...
: Natural stones or ancient megalithic remains in Coate?; A controversial area of land in Swindon (Wiltshire, England) that is earmarked for a housing development could instead become Swindon's own 'mini-Avebury', according to campaigners. The claim comes after ancient...
30 March 2009: New find doesn't end debate on Clovis cache; Last month, University of Colorado archaeologist Douglas Bamforth announced the discovery of a 13,000-year-old cache of 83 stone tools found in Boulder, Colorado (USA). Biochemical analyses of residues on their...
: Researchers find the earliest evidence of domesticated maize; Maize was domesticated from its wild ancestor more than 8700 years according to biological evidence uncovered by researchers in the Mexico's Central Balsas River Valley. This is the earliest dated...
: Ancient cup marks found in India; A chance visit to a remote Pudukkottai hamlet (Tamil Nadu, India) to assess the damage caused by illegal granite quarrying on an ancient protected archaeological site helped an Archaeological Survey...
: First Americans brought anthrax?; Humans were dying of anthrax in North America much earlier than thought - perhaps after scavenging the remains of infected animals while migrating from Asia during the Ice Age-a new...
: Neolithic hilltop home discovered near Edinburgh; The remains of a hilltop home believed to be about 5,000 years old have been discovered on the outskirts of Edinburgh (Scotland). The Neolithic roundhouse, found on a site where...
: Early agriculture left traces in animal bones; Unraveling the origins of agriculture in different regions around the globe has been a challenge for archeologists. Now researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences report...
: Large prehistoric roundhouse unearthed in Somerset; Excavation of a proposed park-and-ride site in Taunton (Somerset, England) has revealed a possible Bronze Age sauna and one of the largest prehistoric roundhouses in Britain. The house dates from...
: Germany's stone age cannibalism; The German city of Speyer, in Rheinland-Palatinate, boasts some macabre relics. A collection of skulls, shin bones and vertebrae might not seem unusual in an archaeology museum, but these particular...
: Ironware piece from Turkey found to be the oldest steel; Japanese researchers digging in Turkey have pushed back the start of the Iron Age, until now presumed to have begun around 1500 BCE, with the discovery of fragments of an...
: New evidence supports China as the cradle of rice cultivation; Dorian Fuller from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, joined by Zheng Yunfei from Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Antiquity and Archaeology and a few other Chinese archaeologists, investigated rice...
: Boulder near Loch Ness could have been an ancient calendar; An amateur archaeologist believes a giant boulder on a hill overlooking Loch Ness (Scottish Highlands) was used as a guide for crop sowing and harvesting by residents of in the...
: Archaeologists call for a dig in North Somerset; The potential for prehistoric archaeological finds under a caravan showroom in St Georges (North Somerset, England) could scupper plans to build nine homes on the site. An archaeologist is demanding...
: 4,000-year-old human skeleton found in Tajikistan; A 4,000-year-old male human skeleton has been discovered in Tajikistan, experts say. The well-preserved skeleton was found by a group of local residents in the foothills near the Tajik village...