Stone Pages Archaeo News: October 2010 Archives

October 2010 index:

2 October 2010: Tregeseal Stone Circle damaged by cattle; Helen Mark of BBC Radio 4 was in Cornwall (England) recently to explore the reintroduction of cattle to grazing on the Penwith Moors, the intention of which is to improve...
: Iron Age sites revealed from the air in Shropshire; Until the last 40 years historians and archaeologists believed that Iron Age ancestors in Shropshire (England) lived almost exclusively on high ground. Conventional wisdom held that the lowlands and river...
: French president gains access to threatened cave art; French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, treated themselves to a visit to the most secretive - and most threatened - art gallery in the world: the Lascaux...
: Home of 'Ice Giants' thaws, shows ancient hunts in Norway; Climate change is exposing reindeer hunting gear used by the Vikings' ancestors faster than archaeologists can collect it from ice thawing at 1,850 meters (6,070 ft) above sea level in...
: 8,500 year old bodies found in Bursa, Turkey; Five bodies believed to be 8,500 years old have been unearthed at a burial mound in the Akçalar area of the Marmara province of Bursa, Turkey. The bodies, comprising of...
: Reconstructing the Paleolithic diet; An interdisciplinary team of scientists has been assembled by the Unilever Corporation to study the diet of our early ancestors and determine how it might improve our health today. The...
: 100 new rock art sites found in Somaliland; A team of Somali archaeologists lead by Dr. Sada Mire from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (England), has found scores of previously unstudied rock paintings in the eastern...
: Excavation of an Iron Age necropolis in central Spain; A team of archaeologists and archaeology students from the United States, Spain, Ireland and Britain recently worked on an archaeological dig to unearth an Iron Age/Celtic necropolis dating to the...
: Ancient grinding stone discovered in India; Workers of the Tamil Nadu highways department unwittingly became excavators as they stumbled upon an ancient granite structure, possibly a lime crushing stone - while digging a trench for constructing...
: Ancient seal found in Turkey; A seal, believed to date back to 6,200 BCE, has been discovered in Western Turkey. The site is located at the Yesilova Tumulus and excavations are being carried out by...
: Tools found in Arabia and India may indicate earlier migration; Discoveries of stone tools in the Arabian Peninsula and India have been found far inland, indicating that humans may have travelled by land rather than by boat. The implements, mainly...
: Did Neanderthals adapt and innovate?; A professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado, Denver (USA) thinks that the Neanderthal contribution to human culture and development has been underrated. Julien Riel-Salvatore has been studying Neanderthal...
: Portal dolmen may lie hidden in South West Wales; Throughout western Britain there are a few lucky sites that have escaped the wandering eye of the antiquarian. One of these sites is the Trefael Stone, located north of the...
8 October 2010: Legend Rock petroglyphs dated to end of Pleistocene; In the arid plains of Wyoming (USA), early humans left their mark. Legend Rock, named by the Shoshone Indians who live nearby, towers 200 feet above the valley floor and...
: Neolithic settlement unearthed in Hungary; The remains of a 7,000-year-old settlement have been unearthed in southwest Budapest's 22nd district by archaeologists of the Budapest History Museum. During the excavations the experts have discovered the foundations...
: Irish fish trap may date back to Mesolithic; Archaeologists have discovered a complex series of weirs and dams to trap rare fish on Connemara's Errislannan peninsula (Ireland), and speculate that they may date back to the Mesolithic period....
: Extraordinary settlement find in India; A large number of stone tools and weapons said dating back to more than 80,000 years ago were unearthed from a dry lake bed in Singadivakkam (Tamil Nadu, India). Located...
: Prehistoric settlements on the Mississippi; A team of archeologists from the Science Museum of Minnesota uncovered more evidence this summer of prehistoric settlements at a park near Hastings (Minnesota, USA). "We know people were traveling...
: 7000-year-old village discovered in Bulgaria; A prehistoric home dated back 7000 years has been uncovered by a team of archaeologists at Telish in the central northern District of Pleven (Bulgaria). The team led by archaeologist...
: Excavation begins on submerged Welsh villages; Ancient stone and willow walls can be found across Wales today. Dr. Andrew Peterson has begun to look for them off the coast of several Welsh towns. Peterson recently excavated...
: Unique Bronze Age burial chamber excavated in Scotland; A 4000-year-old burial chamber in Perthshire has been described as Scotland's 'Valley of the Kings.' Excavation of the site at Forteviot began in earnest last year and has been regarded...
: Prehistoric remains found in Jakarta; Two archeologists from Medan (North Sumatra) have found evidence that a village in the Central Aceh district of Indonesia had been inhabited by prehistoric humans. Ketut Wiradnyana and Lucas Partanda...
: Battle to save the Louisiana State University mounds; The battle for the preservation of Louisiana State University mounds has been won by football fans for now. LSU administrators opted to remove ropes and poles which had been barricading...
: Stonehenge 'boy with the necklace' was from the Mediterranean; In 2005, excavation for road construction 5 kilometers from Stonehenge unearthed the complete skeleton of a teenage boy. He was lying on his side and wore a unique necklace of...
: No evidence for Clovis catastrophe, archaeologists say; A new study published in Current Anthropology challenges the controversial theory that the impact of an ancient comet devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures to inhabit...
: Prehistoric finds in Ontario; Archaeologists have discovered a series of ancient finds in Cayuga (Ontario, Canada). "One particularly interesting prehistoric find is a complete ceramic pot of a very small size, probably the result...
20 October 2010: Australian aborigines may have reached Americas first; Hundreds of skulls discovered in Central and South America exhibit features common today in Australian Aborigines. They date back to approximately 11,000 years BPE. If the heritage and dates were...
: Prehistoric New Guinea settlers headed for the hills; Ancient artefacts unearthed in the highlands of Papua New Guinea provide some of the earliest evidence of human settlement of Sahul, the primordial landmass that once joined Papua New Guinea...
: Pristine Stone Age settlement discovered in Norway; The discovery of a 'sealed' Stone Age house site from 3500 BCE has stirred great excitement among archaeologists from Norway's Museum of Cultural History at the University in Oslo. The...
: 9,000-year-old British Columbian site under threat; Since 1969, scientists have dug deep into earth of the Glenrose Cannery archeological site in North Delta (British Columbia, Canada), and discovered artifacts and other remains that confirm that ancient...
: Ancient objects found in Azerbaijan; Archaeological digs of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Age settlements started in Yastytepe (Azerbaijan). Residuals of brown ware, cutting stones, mud signets, fragments of household utilities and ancient...
: Significant Neolithic tomb found in a Scottish garden; Archeologists believe the tomb Mr Hamish Mowatt discovered under a boulder in the garden of a bistro in South Ronaldsay (Orkney, Scotland) could lead to new insights into Orkney's earliest...
: Bronze Age Troy extended beyond the Citadel; Professor Ernst Pernicka and a team from the University of Tubingen (Germany) have discovered a rock-cut ditch, walls, roads and an ancient oven a kilometer beyond the hill fort at...
: Ancient buried cities discovered in Russia; Twenty settlements, each laid out in the shape of a spiral have been uncovered along the Russian border with Kazakhstan. The cities date from approximately 4,000-3,500 years BCE, which would...
: The origins of compassion; Traces of the world's first known disabled, elderly human have been found in Spain. The individual is thought to have been a male who received support from his group and...
: Controversy over care of an ancient Armenian shoe; Armenian archeologists are worried about the future of the world's oldest (5,500-year-old) leather shoe, found in a cave in Armenia in 2008. It has not been fully examined yet; conservation...
: Bronze Age civilization discovered in Russia; Researchers said that traces of a previously unknown Bronze Age civilization have been discovered in the peaks of Russia's Caucasus Mountains because of aerial photographs taken 40 years ago. "We...
: Prehistoric cremation urn found in Scotland; An ancient cremation urn has been found by archaeologists surveying a site earmarked for a housing project. The team from Headland Archaeology believe the object uncovered at Fortrose (Highland, Scotland)...
: Ancient wooden constructions found in the Czech Republic; Czech archaeologists have uncovered unique wooden constructions, part of a water reservoir connected with an ancient settlement at the Vladar Mountain in west Bohemia, Miloslav Chytracek, from the Archaeological Institute...
: Excavations start at 5,000-year-old Irish dolmen; Archaeologists are to dig out a portal tomb in Northern Ireland for the first time in 50 years. The partial collapse of Tirnony Dolmen near Maghera has produced a rare...
30 October 2010: Prehistoric house discovered in Shetland; A previously unknown archaeological site has come to light in Shetland (Scotland) during work on a gas plant. As a result, a team of archaeologists has been excavating a prehistoric...
: Carved stone investigations in West Yorkshire; A team of consultants have been selected to lead on the 'Prehistoric Carved Rocks' project on Rombalds Moor, the moorland between Ilkley and Keighley in West Yorkshire (England). In addition...
: British burial law is threatening archaeological research; According to experts, the severe restrictions on scientists' freedom to study bones and skulls from ancient graves are putting archaeological research in Britain at risk. The growing dispute concerns controversial...
: White Horse of Uffington: is it a dog?; It is one of Britain's most-loved ancient hill figures, leaping across the downland. Vets are now being urged to question whether the White Horse of Uffington was intended to be...
: Discovery in Peru: ancient geoglyphs or just agricolture?; A huge network of geoglyphs, representing birds, snakes and other animals, is visible in satellite imagery of a large area around Titicaca Lake (Peru), a researcher claims. Amelia Carolina Sparavigna,...
: Hidden landscapes of the Swedish Stone Age; Archaeologist Tony Axelsson of the Vastergotland Museum has suggested a new interpretation of the Neolithic landscape of the Falbygden area of Vastergotland, an area of southwestern Sweden known for its...
: Bronze and Iron Age remains uncovered in Wales; Bronze and Iron Age remains have been unearthed at the site of a new bypass in Powys (Wales). Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) said a number of interesting finds had been...
: Diet of early humans may have included ground flour; Starch grains from cattail, grasses and fern plants have been found on grinding stones dating to 28,000 years BCE. The stones have been found across Europe in locations ranging from...
: Remains of youngest Neanderthal child found in Belgium; The lower jaw and teeth of a Neanderthal child who lived to be one and a half years old were found in the Spy Cave near Jemeppe-sur-Sambre in Belgium. This...
: Restoration of 31 prehistoric sites on Dartmoor; A great deal of of prehistoric sites on Dartmoor (Devon, England) have been restored in a five-year project. As a result of the work, now 31 Bronze Age cairns have...
: Bronze Age tomb found in Poland; Polish Archeologists recently reported the discovery of the tomb of a young prince dating back to 6,000 BCE near the A4 motorway. The scientists who were carrying out excavations on...
: An ancient Swiss door; Archaeologists in Zurich have found a rare example of an ancient wooden door. Chief archaeologist Niels Bliecher announced that, according to tree ring dating, the door could date back to...
: Neolithic necropolis under threat in Sardinia; Although rock-cut tombs are relatively common in Sardinia (Italy), the Tomba della scacchiera has an altogether unique carved and painted rock-art heritage and is now at the centre of controversy....