Stone Pages Archaeo News: June 2010 Archives

June 2010 index:

6 June 2010: Neanderthals were living in Britain much earlier than thought; It had long been thought that ancient man had abandoned the shores of Britain during the period 200,000 to 65,000 BCE, but new excavations in Kent (England) shed some doubt...
: Paleolithic factory discovered in South Africa; A 58,000 year-old site at the Sibudu rock shelter in KwaZulu-Natal near Durban (South Africa) has revealed innovative, cemented stone hearths that may have been used for the mass production...
: Mesolithic axe head unearthed in Ireland; A prehistoric axe head, believed to be 7,000 years old, has been uncovered in Derry (Ireland). The axe head was found on freshly ploughed land near Thornhill College, on the...
: Dholavira, one of the largest cities of the Indus civilisation; Dholavira, a fortified city has recently been identified as one of the largest sites of the Harappan civilisation - otherwise known as the Indus civilisation. Spanning from 3,000 BCE to...
: Push to complete modern Scottish stone circle; For centuries, a hilltop high above Glasgow (Scotland) has been the scene of solstice celebrations. Sighthill Park lies under the line of the midsummer sunset, with Glasgow Cathedral at one...
: Burial mounds in England located thanks to LIDAR; Archaeologists using LIDAR (LIght Detection And Ranging) have located prehistoric burial mounds in the New Forest, Salisbury (England). Discovering such sites in a wooded setting such as the New Forest...
7 June 2010: 13,000-year-old clay figure found in Japan; A clay figure believed to be 13,000 years old and one of the oldest in Japan, was found in an archaeological site in Higashiomi, Shiga Prefecture, the Shiga Prefectural Association...
: First complete look at technology of Clovis culture; A new book on the stone and bone tool technologies of Clovis culture of 13,500 years ago, published by faculty at Texas State University, is the first complete examination of...
: Grave from 17th century BCE excavated in Pakistan; Archaeologists claimed to have excavated ancient graves and artefacts made of clay dating back to 17th century BCE in remote Parwak village of Chitral district (Pakistan). Members of the excavation...
: Scottish engineers find prehistoric pot shard; The discovery of a late archaeological find have posed a raft of potential problems for constructors starting work on a multimillion-pound flood defence system for Inverness (Highland, Scotland). Highland Council...
: Vandals deface Uffington White Horse; Vandals have targeted the ancient Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire (England) by spraying part of it purple. Officers from Thames Valley Police were called to the 3,000-year-old chalk monument at...
15 June 2010: Megalithic tombs unearthed in India; B. Balamohan and K.R. Sona of Thrissur Archaeological Museum confirmed that the Dayanada Ashram at Puliyankad near Kollengode (Palakkad district of Kerala state, south India) is the site of a...
: Rubber barons of Mesoamerica; Rubber was a material unknown to Europeans before the Spanish reached Mesoamerica in the 16th century, but stretching back into prehistory the Olmec, Maya and Aztec peoples were familiar with...
: Turkmen capital is 8,000 years old, archeologists say; Professor Ovez Gundogdiev, Deputy Director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, Turkmenistan led the first national expedition to excavate part of the Turkmen capital, Ashgabat, in a settlement called...
: Ancient bees found in Israel hailed from Turkey; Archaeologists identified the remains of honeybees - including workers, drones, pupae, and larvae - inside about 30 clay cylinders thought to have been used as beehives in the Iron Age...
: Ancient figurine 'factory' uncovered in Cyprus; A team of British archaeologists have uncovered evidence for the production of cruciform figurines (objects with a cross-like shape) such as the Idol of Pomos, which is depicted on the...
: Controversy over decision to reopen Altamira caves; Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde, the Minister of Culture for Spain announced that visitors would once again be allowed to enter the Altamira Caves in the Cantabria region of northern Spain. The decision...
: Road work in England reveals Neanderthal artifacts; In 2007, repairs on the M25/A2 highway in Dartford, Kent (England) uncovered a flint hand tool and waste flake. Archaeologist Dr. Francis Wenban-Smith of Southampton University and his team at...
: Leather fashionable even in prehistoric times; Archaeologists report that leather pants made the scene some 4,200 years ago. Discovered in 2003 in the same Swiss Alps area as the 3,300 year-old Tyrolean iceman known as 'Oetzi',...
: World's oldest leather shoe found in Armenia; A perfectly preserved shoe, 400 years older than Stonehenge in the UK, has been found in a cave in Armenia. The 5,500 year old shoe, the oldest leather shoe in...
: Prehistoric dog burial discovered in California; It might have been a treasured pet, or the victim of traditional destruction of property after its owner's death. The reason for its burial remains a mystery. But 18 centuries...
: A 12,000-year-old find in New Hampshire; Just beyond the trucks working to build a new school in Keene (New Hampshire, USA) lays the remnants of the life that used to be there thousands of years ago....
: Native site in Maryland could date to 1000 BCE; When they first detected traces of an 800-year-old wigwam on a bluff over the Patuxent River last year, archaeologists celebrated what they said was the oldest human structure yet found...
: Ancient cave paintings found in Romania; Romanian experts have discovered the most ancient cave paintings found to date in Central Europe, aged up to 35,000 years old, Romanian and French scientists announced. The pictures show animals...
: What's a Stone Age axe doing in an Iron Age Norwegian tomb?; In 2005 archaeologists Olle Hemdorff and Eva Thäte investigated a grave at Avaldsnes in Karmøy in southwestern Norway, supposed to be from the late Iron Age (600-1000 CE). Avaldsnes is...
22 June 2010: Rain uncovers ancient cemetery in Nicaragua; Ghitis Moises Rivera, director of the museum in Ceibo on the island of Ometepe in southern Nicaragua reported that heavy rains recently uncovered the remains of an indigenous cemetery dating...
: Ancient bones reveal that Neanderthals hunted lions; Butchering marks on bone fragments recovered from the Gran Dolina cave site (Spain) indicate that Neanderthals not only scavanged the remains of cave lions killed by other predators, but that...
: Skull studies make case for 2-wave settlement of the New World; Recent morphological studies of two groups of skulls support the idea that the New World was settled in two migratory waves, not one, as has been previously suggested by genetic...
: Holograms add new dimension to archaeology in Wales; An exciting new exhibition has opened on 18th June in Nantclwyd Y Dre in Ruthin incorporating hologramic images of artefacts in the display. Visitors can expect to see Roman brooches...
: Neolithic finds unearthed on the Norfolk Broads; Richard Mortimer, senior project manager at Oxford Archaeology East reports the find of some of the earliest pottery yet unearthed on farmland next to Ormesby Broad on the Norfolk Broads...
: Iron age hill fort to be excavated in England; Permission has been given by English Heritage for the first excavation in 40 years at the Scheduled Monument at Burrough Hill in Leicestershire (England). Archaeologists hope to gain understanding of...
: School site yelds ancient tools in New Hampshire; Tools made about 11,000 years ago were found at the Maple Avenue site of Keene's new middle school (New Hampshire, USA), which Stoddard archaeologist Robert Goodby said could "easily be...
: Early Neolithic grave discovered in Bulgaria; A grave of a man filled with burial gifts, dating from the early Neolithic period, was recently discovered by archaeologists Georgi Ganetsovski from the Vratsa History Museum, during the renewed...
: Excavations begin at one of the largest henges in Britain; A site at Marden, near Devizes (Wiltshire, England), rivalled Stonehenge and Avebury in its day, says English Heritage. A six-week dig at the site close to the village, will start...
: India's megalithic village of the dead; There's no clear path to Hire Benakal in the hills north of the Tungabhadra River in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. On a gentle slope are scores of dolmens...
28 June 2010: Record arrowhead discovered Kentucky creek; Darrel Higgins has been hunting creek beds for artifacts since he began finding them on farmland when he was a child. But nothing he had found compared to the 9...
: Neolithic Egypt; When you think of Egyptian history the first image is that of a United Egypt under the Pharaohs, but a new museum under construction at Qena will house artifacts from...
: 2010 Stonehenge summer solstice; As usual, thousands of new agers and neo-pagans danced and whooped in delight Monday June 21st, as a bright early morning sun rose above the ancient stone circle Stonehenge, marking...
: Ancient Canadian burial site discovered; The husky, five-foot tall man walked the forests of Northern Ontario (Canada) while the city of Babylon flourish and the Great Pyramids were being built. A remarkable 4,600 year old...
: Common ancestor not yet found; A doctoral study performed at the Centro Nacional de Investigacion sobre la Evolucion Humana, University of Granada (Spain) attempted to reconstruct the history of human evolution by performing analyses on...
29 June 2010: Secrets of Çatalhöyük to be revealed this summer; Archaeological findings unearthed at Çatalhöyük (Turkey), one of the oldest known settlement areas in human history, will be shared with the public at the end of the summer, according to...
: Lecture tells axe's life story; It is not often that archaeologists are able to write the life story of an object, however that is exactly what Alison Sheridan was able to do in her festival...
: Irish Police wade through rubbish to save ancient artefacts; Now known as the Coggalbeg Hoard, a collection of gold artefacts, dating back 4,000 years were saved from the skip in Dublin (Ireland) by the police after being dumped by...
: Artifacts dating back to 5000 BCE found in Vermont; Ancient projectiles dating back roughly 7,000 years ago were found by state archeologists on land near Thomas Dairy in Rutland Town (Vermont, USA) recently. John Thomas, one of the landowners,...
: Gallery grave in Guernsey yields Neolithic findings; A Neolithic burial site in the parish of St Sampson (Guernsey) has yielded structures, flint, pottery fragments and stone tools that date back at least 4500 years. They were discovered...
: Traces of Neolithic civilisation found in India; The mystery surrounding Kondavid Fort (Andhra Pradesh, India) continues to draw countless archaeologists. Now, a freelance archaeologist, K. Venkateswara Rao, has discovered traces of existence of Neolithic civilisation atop the...
: Serbian site may have hosted first copper makers; An archaeological site in Serbia has shown its metal. This ancient settlement contains the oldest securely dated evidence of copper making, from 7,000 years ago, and suggests that copper smelting...
: Ancient stone carving found in South Yorkshire; Prehistoric art 3,000 years old was discovered by chance in woodland by a South Yorkshire council worker while carrying out routine maintenance work. John Gilpin, a woodlands officer in the...