Stone Pages Archaeo News: December 2013 Archives

December 2013 index:

6 December 2013: 10,000-year-old house and temple uncovered near Jerusalem; A remarkable archaeological find in the Judean lowlands southwest of Jerusalem includes a six-millennia-old cultic temple and a 10,000-year-old house. The ancient sites were located in routine archaeological digs conducted...
: Obsidian cache intrigues archaeologists; A beautiful and expertly-flaked obsidian tool which formed part of a cache, rescued from a development site, offers a greater insight into the lives of ancient people that inhabited the...
: Neolithic fortifications discovered in China; Fortifications of the largest Neolithic Chinese city ever discovered were excavated in northwest China's Shaanxi Province. The ruins of two square towers, once part of the city wall of the...
9 December 2013: Hominin DNA baffles experts; DNA from a 400,000-year-old leg bone from Spain - the oldest hominin sequence yet published - has revealed an unexpected link between Europe's inhabitants of the time, and the Denisovans...
12 December 2013: Modern stone circle causes a stir; A modern stone circle on the outskirts of an English village is causing a stir among locals and visitors alike. The stone arrangement, which includes rocks ranging from two feet...
: Ancient skeleton found in North Yorkshire sewer trench; An ancient skeleton has been discovered in a sewer trench under Sutton Street, in the village of Norton-Upon-Derwent (North Yorkshire, England). Contractors from Yorkshire Water were installing sewers when they...
: Humans occupied Cyprus earlier than previously thought; Artifacts found at an archaeological site in Cyprus support a new theory that humans occupied the tiny Mediterranean island about 1,000 years earlier than previously believed. Excavations at Ayia Varvara-Asprokremnos...
: Seminar and a new book about Ġgantija Temples; On Saturday 14th December, Heritage Malta will be organizing a seminar on the Ġgantija Temples which will also feature the launch of the brand new publication on the same subject....
: 3,000-year-old structures unearthed in Colombia; Some 170 archaeologists and workers have spent the last year excavating a 3,000-year-old site in a rural area near the Colombian capital. Covering 7.8 hectares (19.25 acres), the dig is...
13 December 2013: Neolithic wooden tridents on display in Cumbria; Carlisle's Tullie House museum (England) has been donated two very rare Neolithic wooden tridents by Cumbria County Council, and is putting them on display for the public to give their...
: Oldest human footprints in North America identified; There are only two prints - one left and one right - but an ancient hunter-gatherer's path through mineral-rich sediment in the Chihuahuan Desert of northeastern Mexico has been dated...
: How prehistoric people selected the best places to live; Stone Age Brits were masters at choosing the perfect 'desirable residence', according to new research carried out by archaeologists at the University of Southampton, and Queen's University, Belfast. Nutritional and...
18 December 2013: Stonehenge unveils its new visitor centre; After a three-decade, multimillion-pound struggle to build a visitor centre at Stonehenge, which has seen several proposals come and go, architects hired and released, public inquiries held, budgets promised and...
19 December 2013: Ancient feces sparks debate on first Americans; New findings about some ancient feces are the latest rejoinder in a five-year-long debate over one of the most important and controversial recent archaeological finds in USA. The debate centers...
: Cats domesticated by Chinese farmers 5,000 years ago; A study conducted by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has produced the first direct evidence of cat domestication. Led by Yaowu Hu, he and his colleagues analyzed eight...
: European Neanderthals buried their dead; Skeptics have long argued that Neanderthals in Europe did not bury their dead, an activity that implies sophisticated symbolic thought. While Neanderthal burials have been unearthed in the Near East,...
: A glimpse in the life of a Neolithic man; A Neolithic man who was buried in a long barrow 1.5 miles west of Stonehenge, 5,500 years ago has been poked, prodded, and reconstructed by scientists and placed in a...
: Neanderthal DNA reveals interbreeding in early human species; The most complete sequence to date of the Neanderthal genome, using DNA extracted from a woman's toe bone that dates back 50,000 years, reveals a long history of interbreeding among...
21 December 2013: 6,000-year-old tombs unearthed in Vietnam; Six tombs built 6,000 years have just been excavated in Bac Kan Province in Northeast Vietnam, about 180 kilometers north of Hanoi. Local archaeologists used the absolute dating method on...
: Egyptian rock art shows enigmatic spiders; Archaeologists have discovered a panel containing the only known example of spider rock art in Egypt and, it appears, the entire Old World. The rock panel, now in two pieces,...
: What might Stone Age senses have perceived in the landscape?; Archaeo-acoustics is establishing itself as a research area within archaeology, and acoustic mapping becoming acknowledged as a valued aspect of archaeological fieldwork. In 2006, Paul Devereux and Jon Wozencroft initiated...
22 December 2013: Ancient pig-shaped baby bottle found; Italian archaeologists have discovered an ancient terracotta pig which worked as a toy as well as a modern-day baby bottle. Known as guttus, the unique vessel dates back about 2,400...
: Prehistoric Ohio cultures were devoted to Sun and Moon; About 2,000 years ago in the Ohio Valley, the indigenous American Indians must have had certain magi carefully observing the heavens because they aligned their most magnificent earthen monuments to...
30 December 2013: Bronze Age cosmetics revealed in Cyprus; Archaeologists have unearthed a unique 4,000 year-old workshop of cosmetics dating to the early Bronze Age at the Pyrgos-Mavroraki archaeologigal site in Limassol (Cyprus). All previous discoveries elsewhere have been...
: Tombs with couples buried holding hands found in Siberia; Archaeologists have unearthed 3,500-year-old skeletal remains of couples buried facing each other and holding hands in Siberia. The extraordinary discovery, which dates from the Bronze Age, was made in Siberia's...