Stone Pages Archaeo News: January 2011 Archives

January 2011 index:

4 January 2011: The Mann Hopewell legacy of Indiana; The Mann Site in Evansville (Indiana, USA) boasts around 20 mounds built by the Hopewell Tradition, a way of life that flourished in the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. nearly 2,000...
: Cretan tools may point to 130,000-year-old sea travel; Archaeologists on the island of Crete have discovered a set of tools they believe prove that man sailed the sea tens of thousands of years earlier than previously thought. A...
8 January 2011: New book about prehistoric Cumbria; A book which sets out to delve into the secrets of Cumbria's prehistoric past has been published by a Cambridge academic. Dr David Barrowclough, a Fellow in Archaeology, has pulled...
: Large 5,000-year-old site discovered in Iran; A team of archaeologists working on Bam riverside in Kerman Province (Iran) have recently unearthed ruins of a large ancient site, which are believed to belong to a 5000-year-old civilization....
: Recovering ancient DNA from Homo floresiensis' teeth; Scientists are planning an attempt to extract DNA from the 'hobbit' Homo floresiensis, the 1-metre-tall extinct distant relative of modern humans that was unearthed in Indonesia, following a study that...
: Plans for Tasmanian bridge over ancient site move ahead; The government of the Australian state of Tasmania is moving ahead with plans to build a bridge - straight through an Aboriginal meeting site where archaeologists estimate there are more...
: Lecture about recent work at Marden Henge; A lecture by archaeologist Jim Leary about the excavations at Marden in 2010 and the discovery there of an extraordinarily well-preserved Neolithic building will be held Saturday, 05 February 2011...
: Mesolithic wooden structure found in London; The oldest wooden structure ever found on Thames river, timbers over 6,500 years old, have been discovered buried in the silt below the windows of British security services' headquarters at...
: Lice DNA shows we first wore clothes 170,000 years ago; A new University of Florida study following the evolution of lice shows modern humans started wearing clothes about 170,000 years ago, a technology which enabled them to successfully migrate out...
: 6000-year-old findings discovered in southern China; During excavations of the Laohudun Site in Gaohu, Jing'an of Jiangxi Province (southern China) archaeologists have discovered the Terracotta and Painted Pottery Culture, which flourished around 4000 BCE. An important...
9 January 2011: Early farming spread swiftly in Croatia; New excavations, described in San Antonio at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, unveil how southern Croatia was a hub for early farmers who spread their sedentary...
: Stone Age artifacts found in Nepal; The Department of Archeology (DoA) of Nepal has claimed that artifacts found in a cave at Pang-2, Kalimati of Parbat could be thousands of years old. A DoA team led...
10 January 2011: The ancient settlements of Sri Lanka; Sri Lanka had a long history of settlement. The wet zone was the first to be inhabited. There are irrigation works and caves of the early period in the Bintnne...
: Maltese prehistoric site scheduled to stand; The MEPA (Malta Environment & Planning Authority) board confirmed the scheduling of a prehistoric site and turned down appeals to have the scheduling reconsidered. In the area around Ħagra ta'...
13 January 2011: Researcher finds oldest known domesticated dog in Americas; Samuel Belknap III, a University of Maine graduate research assistant working under the direction of Kristin Sobolik, found a 9,400-year-old skull fragment of a domestic dog during analysis of an...
: Neolithic village discovered in Derbyshire; Archaeologist Ben Johnson and his team discovered a 5,500-year-old Stone Age village during a dig in Peak District fields at Curzon Lodge, near Wirksworth (Derbyshire, England). The team spent weeks...
: Ancient Denisovans and the human family tree; Last month scientists revealed remarkable evidence of a new group of ancient humans called Denisovans that interbred with our species and left behind a genetic trace in people living in...
14 January 2011: The origins of wine?; A team of scientists has discovered in a cave in Armenia, what is reputedly the earliest evidence of wine production. The scientific team is lead by UCLA (University of California,...
: Plea for excavating an ancient cave in Derbyshire; The author of a book about caves in Derbyshire (England) is calling for archaeological investigations at the country's largest cave entrance, in Castleton. Teams that have requested permission for a...
15 January 2011: Neolithic sites discovered in southern India; A large number of prehistoric sites have been found in the Gayathripuzha Valley in Palakkad district (Kerala, India). Archaeologists led by V. Sanal Kumar, Director of the Geo-Heritage Archaeology Research...
: What does an Iron Age beer taste like?; Six specially constructed Early Celtic ditches previously excavated at Eberdingen-Hochdorf a 2,550-year-old settlement in Germany, were used to make high-quality barley malt, a key beer ingredient, says archaeobotanist Hans-Peter Stika...
16 January 2011: Early modern humans had our same life expectancy; Life expectancy was probably the same for early modern and late archaic humans and did not factor in the extinction of Neandertals, suggests a new study by Erik Trinkaus, PhD,...
17 January 2011: Pre-Columbian site in Mexico dated to 1500 BCE; Prehispanic ceramics, human skeletons and vestiges of dwelling and ceremonial areas are part of findings registered by archaeologists over a decade of excavations at Tepoztlan, Morelos (Mexico). This discovery reveals...
: Ancient buildings are physical manifestations of Bronze Age societies; Based on previous studies from the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe and new findings from the Tell settlement Százhalombatta-Földvár in Hungary, new research shows detailed information on how societies worked....
19 January 2011: Traffic diversions for Stonehenge visitors; The British Highways Agency is to carry out major safety and improvement work at the Countess Roundabout on the A303 near Amesbury in Wiltshire (England). Work will take place seven...
: Prehistoric rock shelters under threat in Pakistan; About 30 'rock shelters,' some dating back to the Stone Age, in Islamabad (Pakistan) and its surroundings have either been partially destroyed due to construction work or facing danger of...
21 January 2011: 2,500-year-old remains found in New Jersey; A $1.1 million archeological dig that has been under way for months as part of the proposed Scudder Falls Bridge replacement project near Ewing (New Jersey, USA) has turned up...
: Grapes for wine first cultivated 8,000 years ago; A genetics study finds that people first cultivated grapes for wine about 8,000 years ago. In the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team led by Sean...
: New geoglyphs found on Peru's Nazca Plateau; A Japanese research team reported it has discovered two new geoglyphs on Peru's Nazca Plateau, which is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its gigantic lines and geoglyphs....
: Iron Age bog woman's face modeled by German researchers; Archaeologists began studying the the ancient remains of a woman found in a bog in what is now Lower Saxony six years ago. Now a team of German researchers presented...
22 January 2011: Neanderthal nose myth dispelled; For over 150 years it has been believed that Neanderthal man had developed a larger nose to help him warm inhaled air in very cold periods. This is despite the...
23 January 2011: Evidence of contact between Humans and extinct American elephants; Mexican archaeologists discovered 3 Clovis projectile heads associated to remains of a family of extinct elephant-like animals called gomphotheres at least 12,000 years ago. The finding, made in the northern...
24 January 2011: Neanderthals were more athletic than their stereotype suggests; Russian anthropologists and biotechnologists have studied peculiar features of Neanderthal skeletons, which differed from skeletons of modern humans, and reconstructed walk patterns and hunting strategies of ancient humans. Researchers from...
: Westernmost Xia dynasty site discovered in China; The Archaeological Institute of Shaanxi Province (Central China) reported that archaeologists found ancient tombs, ash pits and a long ditch in the style and scale common to the Xia dynasty...
28 January 2011: Polish archaeologists discover ancient carvings and artifacts in Sudan; A team of archaeologists from the Department of Archaeology of Africa, Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology, in Posnan (Poland), have experienced spectacular success during a recent survey in North East...
: Neolithic axe found by 9-year-old Cub Scout; A 9-year-old Cub Scout, Owen Page, when walking with his grandfather in the village of Little Totham, in Essex (England), prevented his grandfather from discarding a rare artifact. On the...
31 January 2011: Largest Neolithic structure yet found in NW China; The remains of a large building were recently unearthed at the Xiahe site in Baishui county, Shaanxi province, in Northwestern China. The structure is thought to have been constructed between...
: Bronze Age cairns in Wales repaired by students; Army Preparation Course students from Pembrokeshire College at Foel Drygarnhave helped to repair a Scheduled Ancient Monument in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park (Wales). The group of 14 from Pembrokeshire...
: 160 ancient settlements dicovered in the Caucasus; An archaeological expedition headed by Dmitry Korobov has found about two hundred ancient settlements following a uniform architectural concept on the Kabardian Ridge, in the foothills of mount Elbrus (Russia)....
: Professor Klaus Schmidt's views on Gobekli Tepe; German archaeologist Professor Klaus Schmidt first came to Turkey in 1978 for research but it wasn't until 1994 that he realized the importance of Göbekli Tepe, an early Neolithic site...
: Did early humans domesticate the fox?; Early humans may have preferred the fox to the dog as an animal companion, new archaeological findings suggest. Researchers analysing remains at a prehistoric burial ground in Jordan have uncovered...
: The enigmatic Mzora stone ring in Morocco; In Morocco, not far from the Atlantic coast and away from major tourist attractions, lies a remarkable and enigmatic megalithic site. The Mzora stone ring (also spelled variously as Msoura/Mezorah)...
: Tools suggest earlier human migration from Africa; Stone Age people apparently took a surprisingly fast track out of Africa via an unexpected route - Arabia. Modern humans reached Arabia's eastern edge as early as 125,000 years ago,...