Stone Pages Archaeo News: July 2009 Archives

July 2009 index:

7 July 2009: Additional news from the dig in County Down; The team behind the dig at the A1 Loughbrickland road scheme (County Down, Northern Ireland) has uncovered not just a Bronze Age burial ground but also a Neolithic settlement dating...
: Archaeologists unravel North Carolina's ancient secrets; Plastic bags packed with pottery shards fill 5-gallon buckets inside a metal storage container a few hundred yards from the edge of the Macon County Airport runway. Airplanes throttle for...
: Insecurity forces archaeologists to abandon digs in Pakistan; Foreign archaeologists involved in excavation work to explore the Indus Valley Civilisation in Pakistan have left the country due to the war-like situation. The experts from the US, Europe and...
: Prehistoric settlement unearthed in Yorkshire; Remains of some of the earliest houses ever found in the North of England have been unearthed in Bridlington (East Riding of Yorkshire). Archaeologists have discovered that buildings stood on...
: How chemistry can reveal the secrets of ancient worlds; The day-to-day lives of prehistoric humans have been revealed following new research developed by chemists at the University of Bristol. The research, which combines archaeology with cutting-edge chemistry allowing scientists...
: Bulgarian archaeologists discover 7,000-year-old settlement; Bulgarian archaeologists have discovered a 7,000-year-old settlement close to the northeast city of Shumen. The village dates back to the Stone-Copper Age, and is located in the locality of Chanadzhik,...
: Ancient burial of a child uncovered in Vietnam; An archaeological excavation in southern Vietnam of a site more than 3000 years old has shed new light on how the death of young children was viewed by community members...
: No Etruscan link to modern Tuscans; The current population of Tuscany is not descended from the Etruscans, the people that lived in the region during the Bronze Age, a new Italian study has shown. Researchers at...
: Private group offers to run prehistoric site in Ohio; A nonprofit group has offered to take over management of Fort Ancient, a prehistoric Indian site located in Ohio (USA) that faced with closing this summer because of proposed cuts...
: Arsenic poisoning victims in Chile in 5000 BCE; Seven thousand years ago, about 100 km from the contemporary port city of Arica in Chile, a child died. The grieving parents did not want to part with the last...
: New research network for underwater archaeology; Up to 3.2 million square kilometers of the European continental shelf (about 40 per cent of Europe's land mass) was exposed as dry land during the periods of lower sea...
: Prehistoric henge may be the largest in Lincolnshire; Remains of a prehistoric henge could be lying just feet below a Lincolnshire (England) field, say experts. Studies of a large site in Navenby, north of Lincoln, have revealed telltale...
13 July 2009: Pipeline work digs up artifacts in Nebraska; A pre-construction crew with the Keystone Pipeline project, which originates in Hardesty, Canada, and is currently digging the pipeline route in northeast Nebraska (USA), found evidence of prehistoric artifacts while...
: Festival of British archaeology (18th July - 2nd August 2009); The Festival of British Archaeology 2009 is an annual extravaganza of heritage events coordinated by the Council for British Archaeology. Each year the Festival helps museums, local societies, national and...
: Ancient supervolcano's eruption caused severe winters; Previous studies have suggested that Indonesia's Toba supervolcano, when it erupted about 74,000 years ago, triggered a 1,000-year episode of ice sheet advance, and also may have produced a short-lived...
: Switzerland proposes underwater UNESCO sites; The Swiss Federal Office of Culture has unveiled its next dossier bound for a UNESCO heritage panel: the underwater ruins of lakeside communities from the Neolithic and the Bronze ages....
: Humans ate fish 40,000 years ago; Freshwater fish are a major part of the diet of many peoples around the world, but it has been unclear when fish became a significant part of the year-round diet...
: Mesolithic human traces discovered in Romania; Human traces dating from the Early Mesolithic Period were recently discovered at the Schela Cladovei archaeological site in south-western Romania by experts from the University of Edinburgh and of the...
: Illness brought down early human rival; Scientists seeking to uncover the mystery of what happened to the Neanderthals should look to the modus operandi of another great die-off 30,000 years later, argues a Danish expert in...
: BorgerMeetings: conferences on the Funnelbeaker culture; The Megalith Museum 'Hunebedcentrum Borger', dr J.A. Bakker and Hazenberg Archeologie will organize the BorgerMeetings, a series of international TRB conferences. The first of these conferences will be held in...
: 15 new prehistoric sites found in Java; Up to 15 new prehistoric sites have been discovered recently in Purbalingga regency, Central Java. The head of Purbalingga administration's Media Information Division, Prayitno, said the sites were spread across...
: The Prehistoric Peak; Andrew Johnstone started to work with Britain's prehistory as his subject matter in 2007, when he was accepted onto the MA Communication Design course at Central Saint Martins College of...
: Secrets of Bradford hill fort under the microscope; Described by one archaeologist as the unluckiest hill fort in Wiltshire (England), the Iron Age past of Budbury in Bradford on Avon remains to this day shrouded in mystery. Local...
: Gristhorpe Man slowly gives up his secrets; Last July 10th marked the 175th anniversary of the discovery of Scarborough's bronze age ancestor, Gristhorpe Man. Now residing in the Rotunda Museum (North Yorkshire, England), Gristhorpe Man, the tallest...
: Underwater exploration seeks evidence of early Americans; Last summer's pivotal underwater exploration in the Gulf of Mexico led by Mercyhurst College archaeologist Dr. James Adovasio yielded evidence of inundated terrestrial sites that may well have supported human...
: Danish students uncover hundreds of Iron Age remains; There was a sensational find when Århus archaeology students uncovered the bones of around 200 bodies dating from the Iron Age. What was supposed to be a simple three week...
: Africa's oldest ceramic unearthed in Mali; Archaeologists from Geneva University have discovered what they claim is Africa's oldest ceramic, dated at around 9,400 BCE, in eastern Mali. "It's a tiny, ornate fragment that was made with...
19 July 2009: Stone rings unearthed at prehistoric sites in Java; An archeological research team from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and the Purwokerto-based Jendral Sudirman University has discovered at least 50 new sites rich in prehistoric relics along the...
: Ancient dwelling unearthed at Isle of Man airport; A prehistoric dwelling - 3,000 years older than Stonehenge - has been unearthed during construction of the runway extension at Isle of Man Airport. Dating back an astonishing 8,000 years...
: Bronze Age sanctuary discovered in Bulgaria; A team of Bulgarian archaeologists has uncovered a Bronze Age sanctuary near the village of Kran, close to the town of Kazanlak in Central Bulgaria. The team led by Professor...
: Isotope analysis dates ancient Mexican; After years of controversy, a new study shows that the skeleton of Mexico's Tepexpan Man is nearly 5,000 years old and lived on the shores of a tree-lined lake. Nowadays...
: Dental wear establishes when hominids lived at sites; For many years, the mobility of the groups of hominids and how long they spent in caves or outdoors has been a subject of discussion among scientists. Now, an international...
: Children find ancient bones at Irish golf club; An expert from the Irish National Museum was this week examining the site of an ancient grave found on Ballybunion golf course (County Kerry, Ireland) by children. A human skeleton...
: News from Flag Fen; Peterborough's Bronze Age site Flag Fen (England) has struck gold in the form of a £2,000 grant from a DIY giant, thanks to its 21st century business plan. Nyree Ambarchain,...
: New findings on ancient snake cult in UAE; New research into a snake cult that lived in the mountains near Masafi (United Arabian Emirates) during the Iron Age will be presented at the world's leading conference on Arabian...
: Cave record of Britain's pioneers; The Cheddar Gorge in Somerset (England) was one of the first sites inhabited by humans when they returned to Britain towards the end of the last Ice Age. New radiocarbon...
: Neanderthals were few and poised for extinction; For much of their 400,000 year history, Neanderthals were few and far between, a new analysis of genetic material from several of the extinct, ancient humans now suggests. In fact,...
: Megalithic burial site excavated in India; A huge megalithic burial site said to date back to 3rd Century BCE has been unearthed near Tiruvannamalai (Tamil Nadu, India). Human skeletal remains, iron daggers and a sword, decorated...
: Oetzi's tattoos came from fireplace; The 57 tattoos sported by Oetzi, the 5300-year-old iceman mummy found in Italy, were made from fireplace soot that contained glittering, colorful precious stone crystals, according to an upcoming study...
26 July 2009: Excavation in Lebanon aims to uncover ancient ruins; The Directorate-General of Antiquities, Lebanon, has said that it plans to resume excavation at the Freres archaeological site in the old city of Sidon in collaboration with a delegation of...
: How clothing has given humans an edge over other species; In a new study, a scientist is analyzing how humans came to develop clothing, and how that innovation might have in turn given our species an evolutionary edge over other...
: Prehistoric American Indian settlement discovered in Ohio; The earliest suggestion of something worth uncovering on thias plateau above the Huron River (Ohio, USA) were some dark electronic smudges on a piece of graph paper. The smudges piqued...
: Did a comet really smash into Canada 13,000 years ago?; A team of U.S. scientists that has unearthed a layer of microscopic diamonds on a California island (USA) is calling the find a possible 'smoking gun' to prove a controversial...
: Ancient population boom in India explained; Thirty-five thousand years ago, a diminutive innovation transformed India. The advent of stone microblades set the stage for the subcontinent's explosive population growth, new research suggests. The easy-to-manufacture tools -...
: Human stabbed a Neanderthal, evidence suggests; The wound that ultimately killed a Neanderthal man between 50,000 and 75,000 years was most likely caused by a thrown spear, the kind modern humans used but Neanderthals did not,...
: Evidence from a 4000-year-old party in Peru; Researchers from the University of Missouri have found evidence of a grand scale party by ancient humans 4,000 years ago, in the form of remnants that still remain in the...
: Remains of ancient buildings found in Croatia; Archaeologists have spent 12 years researching the 8,000 year old 'Starcevacka Kultura' (Starcevacka Culture) from the Neolithic. This is the first time that remains have been found above ground. "This...
: First settlements in Cyprus may be older than thought; Archaeologists in Cyprus found evidence that inhabitants of the Mediterranean island may have abandoned a nomadic lifestyle for agriculture-based settlements earlier than previously believed. The excavations at the Politiko-Troullia site,...
: Stonehenge - A 1-day course at the University of Oxford; Next Saturday 23rd January 2010, a one-day course simply titled 'Stonehenge' will be held at the University of Oxford (England). Through the presentations to this dayschool you will get behind...
: DNA confirms coastal trek to Australia; DNA evidence linking Indian tribes to Australian Aboriginal people supports the theory humans arrived in Australia from Africa via a southern coastal route through India, say researchers. The research, lead...
: Mesolithic finds in Birmingham; Archaeologists have uncovered remarkable evidence that stone age man lived in the centre of Birmingham (England) more than 10,000 years ago. The settlers used basic flint knives to hunt and...
: Archeologists discover 20,000-year-old hearth in Taiwan; A team from Academia Sinica has recently discovered a Neolithic stone hearth in a cave in Taitung County that has been confirmed as the earliest human relic to have been...