Nero's Golden Palace to reopen Jan. 30

Rome's famous tourist attraction to partially open in midst of restoration

Nero's Golden Palace will be partially reopened to tourists in January, even while archaeologists and restorers keep working to shore up the ancient imperial residence which had been in danger of collapsing because of heavy rains.

Starting Jan. 30, small groups will be allowed to visit about half of the sections that were open before rainwater infiltrated the building a year ago, damaging frescoes and raising safety concerns, officials said during a tour on Tuesday.

Restoration of the 1st century palace will continue during the tours and special scaffolding has been set up to protect visitors from any falling debris.

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Archaeological Summer Schools and Training Excavations

The New Year is a time when many people start to think about plans for the summer, including archaeological summer schools and training excavations.

It seemed a good idea, therefore, to put a list of useful links to help you with your choice.

You can find the list at: www.archaeology.eu.com/schools.html

If you know of summer schools and training excavations that do not yet appear on the list, please send details to: Archaeology in Europe

Nero's palace in Rome to reopen after safety scare

The palace of Nero, one of Rome's most popular tourist sites, will partly reopen to the public in January after being closed for more than a year for emergency repairs, officials said.

The Domus Aurea, or House of Gold, had attracted an average of 1,000 visitors every day until water leaks last December stoked fears that the nearly 2,000-year-old palace might collapse.

Italy's government and the city of Rome have earmarked more than 4 million euros ($5.27 million) for the repairs, which officials described on Tuesday as part of a broader initiative to rescue the city's eroding archaeological sites.

"The Domus Aurea is the crown jewel of a more important (restoration) job we're doing," said Rome mayor Walter Veltroni.

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ARCHAEOLOGISTS PRESERVE AND RECORD STONE MINES BENEATH BATH

Combe Down Stone Mines near Bath are being stabilised and recorded as part of a long running programme by Oxford Archaeology.

The mines, situated about two kilometres south of the city of Bath, were extensively quarried for the highly sought after Bath limestone between 1730 and 1860 and did not cease operations until the early years of the 20th century. The high quality stone was used not only for buildings in Bath but also in the construction of prestigious buildings such as Buckingham Palace.

Working in tandem with Hydrock, the structural engineering company who are stabilising the site, Oxford Archaeology hope to assess the significance of the deposits and provide advice upon their preservation and recording.

Ianto Wain, Project Manager of the site says, “We have to be reactive so we have a permanent archaeologist who goes down with the engineers to record the deposits they encounter."

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Vikings to invade Ireland

The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde has reconstructed a long ship from the Viking age to undertake a voyage to Dublin, Ireland

An exact reconstruction of a Viking ship from the 11th century will be launched in 2007 on a historic journey from Roskilde to Dublin and back.

Ship owner Carsten Brebøl's non-profit foundation has donated DKK 2 million to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde to support the project. The new ship has been dubbed The Sea Stallion.

The original ship, Skulderlev 2, was built in Dublin in 1042 and found at the bottom of Roskilde Fiord in 1962. Since then the ship has been on display at the Viking Ship Museum.

The Sea Stallion, named one of twelve representatives of outstanding Danish design and craftsmanship in the Cultural Canon by the Ministry of Culture, has been built at the Viking Ship Museum Boat yard using the methods, materials and tools of the Viking Age. The boat has a length of 30 meters, a 3.8 meter width and a total of 60 oars. It can hold a crew of up to 100.

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How a manuscript found in an Irish peat bog was saved

An astonishing discovery in an Irish bog is posing an unusual conservation challenge. A chance find by a peat cutter last summer in County Tipperary, southern Ireland, turned out to be a psalter, which has been dated to around 800 AD. The discovery has been described as the Irish equivalent of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

National Museum of Ireland conservator Rolly Read and his team are now stabilising the compacted vellum mass. The difficult issue is how to separate the pages, preserving as much as possible of the ancient text.

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Bone fragment likely not Joan of Arc

CHINON, France - A rib bone and a piece of cloth supposedly recovered after Joan of Arc was burned at the stake are probably not hers, according to experts trying to unravel one of the mysteries surrounding the 15th century French heroine.

Eighteen experts began a series of tests six months ago on the fragments reportedly recovered from the pyre where the 19-year-old was burned for heresy.

Although the tests have not been completed, findings so far indicate there is "relatively little chance" that the remnants are hers, Philippe Charlier, the head of the team, told The Associated Press on Saturday.

The fragment of linen from the 15th century "wasn't burned. It was dyed," Charlier said. And a blackened substance around the 6-inch rib bone was not "carbonized remains" but vegetable and mineral debris, "something that rather resembles embalming substance," he said.

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Humans Migrated Out of Africa, Then Some Went Back, Study Says

Humans first moved out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, but 30,000 years later some of them moved back.

That's according to a new study based on DNA evidence from ancient human remains found in Africa.

The study shows that a small group of early humans returned to Africa after migrating to the Middle East.

In addition, the research suggests that the humans' return occurred around the same time that another group of humans left the Middle East and moved into Europe.

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Illicit artefacts sold as eBay turns blind eye

Roman and Anglo-Saxon jewellery and other artefacts are still being sold illegally on eBay, despite the website’s promise to clamp down on the trade.

The British Museum has told The Times that it is alarmed at the number of sellers offering gold and silver that has apparently been found on British soil but has not been reported.

The Treasure Act 1996 requires the reporting of all gold and silver objects more than 300 years old, and groups of coins that are more than 300 years old and found on the same site.

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Visualising the past in 3D: The River Arun

Archaeologists at Wessex Archaeology have completed a 3D animation that reveals a prehistoric landscape, now submerged under the English Channel, as it might have appeared 8000 years ago.
At the end of the last ice age the River Arun in West Sussex flowed a further 8 miles out. Archaeological survey has revealed the lay of the land, and what plants and trees grew there. The complex evidence has been turned into a compelling animated tour showing how the landscape might have looked and how families made a living from the land and the sea.

The Seabed Prehistory project was established to research ways of identifying evidence of prehistoric landscapes in and around aggregate dredging areas. This dredging provides many of the raw materials, such as gravel, needed for the buildings industry. The project was designed to see if equipment that is commonly used by the offshore industry could also identify archaeological remains. It was an opportunity for archaeologists and the aggregate industry to work together to gain a better understanding of the archaeology under the seabed. The results of this project will inform future proposals for new aggregate dredging licences.

The picture is built up with data collected as part of the project, or inferred from other research. Geophysical survey identified the different geological layers in the study area, revealing the shape of the land. Vibrocores were used to gather evidence from the buried landscape. Vibrocores are tubes that are pushed into the seabed. The column of sediment that is caught within the tube contains layers of ancient soils.

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Protecting ancient Welsh forts from modern invasion

Ancient Welsh people from the Iron Age were defended by forts, often built on cliff-top promontories for extra security. The very reasons they chose these locations create problems today with the narrow strips of land being eroded on both sides by the sea. A partnership between the National Trust and Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority is helping to ensure that these important monuments remain safely accessible to interested visitors, while making sure they are protected from the impact of pounding feet.

At Longhouse, a promontory fort between St Davids and Fishguard, the path has been routed away from eroding cliffs. The new footpath will also help protect the fort's ramparts. Similar concerns led to work at Porth y Rhaw where footpaths crossed the ramparts and ran along crumbling clifftops.

Emma Plunkett Dillon, archaeologist for the National Trust, said, "We know that features like Porth y Rhaw are very popular but unfortunately such historic landmarks can't withstand the impact of large numbers of visitors. We have to consider where the safest route lies and how people can enjoy seeing the fort whilst doing our best to make sure it will be around for future generations to enjoy."

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Why did Romans, Celts, and even prehistoric settlers submerge their personal belongings, from swords to dishes, in a shallow river in Slovenia?

Archaeologist Andrej Gaspari is haunted by pieces of the past. His hometown river, the Ljubljanica, has yielded thousands of them—Celtic coins, Roman luxuries, medieval swords—all from a shallow 12-mile (19 kilometers) stretch. Those who lived near and traveled along the stream that winds through Slovenia's capital of Ljubljana considered it sacred, Gaspari believes. That would explain why generations of Celts, Romans, and earlier inhabitants offered treasures—far too many to be accidental—to the river during rites of passage, in mourning, or as thanksgiving for battles won.

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Quantifying the Functional Utility of Handaxe Symmetry: An Experimental Butchery Approach

The aim of this series of experiments was to empirically test the relationship between Acheulean handaxe form and effectiveness for butchery, and contribute to the continuing discussion regarding the factors influencing handaxe form. Whilst a number of small scale experiments have reported upon the efficacy of handaxes for butchery none has gone beyond the subjective experience of a single researcher using a small number of handaxes to butcher one or two carcasses. By using sixty handaxes, thirty fallow deer carcasses and two butchers we were able to produce a dataset which permitted the statistical analysis of the relationship between effectiveness (measured using the proxies of time and the scorings of the butchers) and nine measures of handaxe morphology (frontal and side symmetry, weight, length, breadth, thickness, percentage of the circumference worked, degree of thinning and degree of elongation). The archived dataset comprises a time log for the use of each handaxe (derived from video footage of the experiments) which details the time taken to complete the various processes involved in the butchery of half a deer carcass, digital images of the experimental handaxe assemblage and summary spreadsheets of the data collected - i.e. time and subjective scorings - for each butcher.

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Pope asked to return Greek artifact

Vatican City - Greece's top religious leader asked Pope Benedict on Thursday to return a piece of the Parthenon in the Vatican Museums, Greek officials said.

Christodoulos, Orthodox archbishop of Athens and of all Greece, made the request during a visit when he and the Pope signed a joint declaration on issues of common concern, such as the defence of life.

According to spokespersons for Christodoulos, the Pope was a bit perplexed by the request, perhaps not knowing that the vast museums he technically owns as sovereign of Vatican City have a fragment of the 5th century BC structure.

He said he would consider the request, they said.

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ARCHAEOLOGY LOOKS AHEAD

Archaeology experts will be discussing the role their discipline has in today's society at a public discussion in Exeter on Saturday.The Future of Our Past, at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, will look at how archaeology has attracted enthusiasts as a result of popular television programmes on the subject.

Tickets for the event are free and can be picked up in advance at reception.

Anyone requiring start times or more details should contact the museum on 01392 665858.

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Proposed land train to Stones too 'intrusive'

A PROPOSAL to run a land train as part of plans for a new £67.5m Stonehenge visitors centre has come under fire during the second week of the Salisbury public inquiry.

The aim is to use the train to transport tourists from the visitors centre to within walking distance of the ancient stones.

But the chairman of the Stonehenge Alliance, George McDonic, said the trains would conflict with both national and international policies that seek to protect the landscape around the World Heritage site.

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Rare medal, proclaiming Henry VIII head of the Church of England, makes £22,500 at Carlisle sale

A rare Henry VIII medal, military decorations and a Royal Marines helmet, belt and spurs proved to be the star attractions in Thomson, Roddick & Medcalf’s December auction.

The Henry VIII silver medal, marked Londini 1545, sold for £22,500 at the coin and numismatic sale at the firm’s auction house in Shaddongate.

Only two other examples of the medal, which bears inscriptions in Hebrew and Greek proclaiming Henry as head of the Church of England, exist.

The other medals are exhibits at the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

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ENGLISH HERITAGE BEGINS COASTAL ARCHAEOLOGY SURVEY IN LINCOLNHSIRE

Archaeologists working for English Heritage have begun examining 12,000 aerial photographs, some dating back to the Second World War, to identify historic sites on the brink of being lost to the North Sea.

The project is examining 137 kilometres (85 miles) of vulnerable coastline from Whitby to Donna Nook, in North East Lincolnshire, including Holderness, where erosion rates are as high as six metres per year.

"Rates of erosion along many parts of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire coast are very high,” explained Peter Murphy, Coastal Strategy Officer with English Heritage. “It's also an area rich in archaeology, so it's a national priority to get the work done.”

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13th century finds uncovered in Berwick dig

A SILVER coin dating from the 13th century reign of King Henry III is among the medieval finds uncovered by archaeologists in the Walkergate area of Berwick.

The short-cross penny, which is still in very good condition having been preserved in the soil for centuries, dates from the 1260s.

"This date and the quality of the building's construction suggest that it may relate to the medieval heyday of Berwick," explained Chris Burgess, Northumberland county archaeologist.

"It appears to have been slightly disturbed by some of the later pits and robbing, but should be in a comparatively good state of preservation, having been largely protected by the depth of the dark-earths that overly it.

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Famous archaeologist supports battle centre

ARCHAEOLOGY expert Tony Pollard is the latest high-profile figure to support the Battle of Prestonpans Heritage Trust’s bid for a £7.5 million visitor centre to mark the famous conflict.

The Trust is making plans to have a permanent commemoration to the famous battle which it hopes would attract visitors on a scale similar to the Culloden site near Inverness.

Tony is one of the foremost experts on battle sites in Britain and presented the BBC2 series, Two Men In A Trench, alongside former Courier deputy editor Neil Oliver.

The pair wrote a book of the same name and have investigated major battle sites all over the UK, with their findings sometimes turning history on its head.

Tony is hoping to conduct an archaeological survey of the Prestonpans area to highlight its historic importance.

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Quantifying Butchery by Handaxe

Oh, of course this isn't about serial killers (but maybe it would make a good title for a movie), but Archaeological Data Service has a new article on experimental archaeology using Acheulean handaxes, and it is very interesting indeed:

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Race against time to record coastal history

Experts rush to make records of valuable sites before they disappear forever into the advancing North Sea

IT is rugged, dramatic and ever-changing.

And now the Yorkshire coast is to be scrutinized like never before.

Archaeologists are poring over 12,000 aerial photographs, some dating back to the Second World War, to uncover and identify historic sites on the brink of being lost to the North Sea.

The project, funded by English Heritage, is examining 85 miles (137km) of vulnerable coastline stretching from Whitby to Donnna Nook in North East Lincolnshire.
The results will be fed into English Heritage's national Rapid Coastal Zone Assessment Survey, which aims to provide the most detailed picture yet of the threat posed to the nation's heritage by rising sea levels, coastal erosion, and the managed realignment of the coastline.

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3,000-year-old dam revives farming in Turkish village

In this central Turkish village, peasants and archaeologists celebrate a unique achievement -- a 3,246-year-old dam, once buried under mud and slime, is back in service to irrigate farmlands.

The dam is a heritage of the Hittites, who ruled over vast areas of the Middle East from 2000 to 1000 BC, fought Pharaoh Rameses The Great, among others, and built some of the biggest cities of the time in the heart of Anatolia, the Asian part of modern Turkey.

The 2,500 inhabitants of Alacahoyuk know the Hittites well: since the early 20th century, archaeologists have been digging the remains of a royal city at the entrance of their village about 160 kilometers (100 miles) east of Ankara.

The tombs of the settlement, its foundations still guarded by two imposing stone lions, have yielded some of the most precious Hittite treasures -- plates, jewelry, bronze and gold statuettes now on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara.

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St. Paul's Tomb Unearthed in Rome

St. Paul's stone coffin has been found beneath Rome's second largest basilica, but its contents remain a mystery, Vatican archaeologists announced today.

The sarcophagus dates back to about A.D. 390 and was uncovered in Rome's Basilica of St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls, named for its location beyond the ancient wall surrounding Rome's center.

Long believed to be buried beneath the church's altar, the coffin is now on display for the first time in centuries—its precious cargo, however, is not.

"For now we didn't open the sarcophagus to study the contents. Our aim was to unearth the coffin venerated as St. Paul's tomb, not to authenticate the remains," said Giorgio Filippi, the archaeologist of the Vatican Museum, who directed the excavations.

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4,000-year-old Seahenge to rise again – but not until 2008

CONSERVATION work on the Seahenge wooden circle is continuing apace – but it will be at least a year before the Bronze Age monument will be on display in Lynn.
The 4,000-year-old structure was uncovered by waves on the beach at Holme in 1998, sparking frenzied interest from the archaeological community.

In 1999 the pieces were excavated and preserved before they were handed to the Mary Rose Trust in Portsmouth for conservation, with the ultimate aim of putting them on display in Lynn.

The pieces chosen to go on display in Lynn Museum are currently being removed from a waxy substance called peg, which holds the wood fibres together.

Over the next two or three months they will be freeze-dried to remove any remaining water, before they are cleaned by experts and transported to Lynn Museum.
Robin Hanley, area museums manager for West Norfolk, said staff will spend the following six months painstakingly creating mounts and supports for the individual pieces.

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Ancient Ape Ruled Out Of Man's Ancestral Line

Ancient remains, once thought to be a key link in the evolution of mankind, have now been shown to be 400,000 years too young to be a part of man's family tree.

The remains of the apeman, dubbed Little Foot, were discovered in a cave complex at Sterkfontein by a local South African team in 1997. Its bones preserved in sediment layers, it is the most complete hominid fossil skeleton ever found.

Little Foot is of the genus Australopithecus, thought by some to be part of the ancestral line which led directly to man. But research by Dr Jo Walker and Dr Bob Cliff of the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment, with Dr Alf Latham of Liverpool University's School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, shows the remains are more than a million years younger than earlier estimates.

The team used uranium lead chronology to date the remains. Working on extracts of stalagmite deposits from immediately above and below the body, they dated the skeleton at around 2.2 million years old.

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Antiquities smuggling: 'A crime against humanity'

She's 2,500 years old, stunningly beautiful and at the center of the latest smuggling scandal to have sullied the world of antiquities.

On Monday the Los Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Museum announced it would return a sixth century B.C. marble statue of a young woman to Greece following claims by the Greek government that the artwork was illegally excavated and taken out of the country without proper authority.

The statue is one of two ancient artifacts on their way back to the Aegean from the display cases of the Getty Villa in Malibu -- the section of the J. Paul Getty Museum specializing in classical remains from Greece and Italy. The other is a fourth century B.C. gold funerary wreath.

"It is the appropriate way to resolve complex ownership claims involving ancient works of art," declared a museum statement.

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Life-size sketch of giant dome uncovered

Archaeologists digging to reach the tomb of St Paul have stumbled across a life-size "sketch" of the dome of St Peter's produced by one of its architects in the 16th century.

The excavation of St Paul's tomb at the church of St Paul's Outside-the-Walls in Rome is now complete, and the sarcophagus will be on view from the beginning of next year.

However, three feet below the floor of the enormous church, which is the second-largest in the city, the project's team came across a surprise from the Renaissance.

An architectural drawing of the arches and walls of the dome of St Peter's had been carved into 1,726 marble slabs by Giacomo Della Porta, who took over the design and construction work of the dome after the death of Michelangelo. The slabs had formed the floor of the church at the time.

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FOLLOWING ANTIGONE: FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS INVESTIGATIONS

Location: Worldwide Length: 40 min.

This film tells how forensic sciences and archaeology have been used to investigate international human-rights abuses in trouble spots around the world. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), an international Non-governmental Organization (NGO), took footage of forensic investigations they carried out in Argentina, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, and East Timor in order to tell the story of what they do. Exhumation and reburial sequences document the heavy emotional toll befalling survivors and their families.

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New scan of 'Neanderthal' jawbone

A piece of jawbone found in a Devon cave is being re-examined by scientists who believe it may be Britain's first direct evidence of Neanderthal man.

The bone was excavated from Kents Cavern in Torquay in 1927 and was thought to be about 31,000 years old.

But more research showed the Torquay Museum piece could be 40,000 years old.

A computer scan is to be carried out to determine if the bone was put back together correctly after it was found, and to see if DNA can be extracted.

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British Neanderthals: jawbone may provide first evidence

A piece of jawbone known to be thousands of years old is being re-examined by scientists who believe it may be Britain's first direct evidence of Neanderthal man.

The bone was excavated from Kents Cavern in Torquay, south Devon in 1927 and was thought to be about 31,000 years old.

However a team at the Natural History Museum are wondering if the jawbone is actually more ancient, perhaps from a Neanderthal.

The new research was initiated when Dr Roger Jacobi and Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum obtained new radio-carbon dating for animal bones found in cave sediments directly above and below where the jaw fragment was found.

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Vatican may open St Paul's tomb

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican said on Monday it was studying the possibility of opening a thick marble sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the 1st century apostle St Paul to study its contents.
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The prospect was raised at a news conference at which Vatican officials unveiled the results of an archaeological dig which has made part of the sarcophagus in Rome's Basilica of St Paul's Outside the Walls visible to pilgrims.

"We tried to X-ray it to see what was inside but the stone was too thick," said Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, archpriest of the basilica on Rome's outskirts.

"We will now take the necessary steps to seek the authorisation to explore the inside. This is being studied," he said, adding that the Pope would have to give eventual permission since the Vatican owns the basilica.

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Restoration unveils Roman 'Sistine Chapel of the Middle Ages'

A series of medieval frescoes painstakingly restored over nearly a decade was unveiled to the public in Rome Tuesday.

Visitors, including Italian Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli, were on hand to take a first glimpse at the 13th-century frescoes in the Santi Quattro Coronati monastery, which sits atop a hill in Rome.

The secluded area was formerly a closed community where the Augustinian nuns had maintained cloistered lives since the 16th century.

While the monastery is not usually open to the public, Rutelli said the area where the frescoes are located will be opened in the spring so everyone can enjoy them.

A team of six experts carried out the restoration project, which began in 1997 and was financed completely by the Cultural Heritage Ministry.

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Shortcuts: How to make it as an archaeologist

Following news that archaeologists in Rome have discovered a sarcophagus containing what they believe to be the mortal remains of St. Paul the Apostle, we offer a few tips on how to get in on the world of excavation.

Forget the bull whip

It might have got Indiana Jones out of a scrape or two, but then Indiana Jones has little if anything to do with real archaeology. Excavators these days are far more likely to be armed with a theodolite and laptop than a whip and pistol, so if you are working on the assumption that archaeology = glamour you're going to be sorely disappointed. Mind you, if you find yourself digging somewhere hot then an Indiana Jones Fedora might come in useful.

Study hard, get the qualifications

Gone are the days of the enthusiastic amateur -- men such as 19th Century businessman Heinrich Schliemann who, having made a fortune contracting during the Crimean War, decided to turn his hand to excavating and, at Mycenae and Troy, made some of the most spectacular discoveries in the history of archaeology. These days archaeologists are highly qualified, technically skilled professionals -- simply being able to poke around in the ground with a trowel is no longer enough. Draughtsmanship, surveying, micro-botany, photography, material conservation, epigraphy, digital design, cartography, computing -- these are just a few of the skills that are required on a modern archaeological mission (although not all necessarily by the same person).

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Vatican Hopes to Look Inside Found Tomb

A white marble sarcophagus believed to be the final resting place of St. Paul has been unearthed from beneath the altar of Rome's second-largest basilica after centuries hidden from view, but those curious about its contents will have to wait still longer.

Vatican experts, announcing Monday that the coffin had been unearthed, said they hoped to be able to examine it more closely and maybe even look inside.

But Giorgio Filippi, a Vatican archaeologist, said researchers' first concern was to free it from centuries of plaster and debris in the hope of finding other clues on the sarcophagus itself.

'Right now we can treat it as a symbol, regardless of its contents,' Filippi said.

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L.A. Museum to Return 2 Greek Treasures

The J. Paul Getty Museum announced Monday that it would return to Greece an ancient gold wreath and a marble bust that Greece claims were illegally spirited out of the country.

At a news conference with the Greek culture minister, museum director Michael Brand said they had ``reached an agreement in principle on the return of two objects.''

A statement added that ``a formal agreement, which will be signed soon, will include details about the return of the objects to Greece.''

Greece claims the works - a gold wreath dating from about 400 B.C. and a sixth century B.C. marble statue of a young woman - were illegally excavated and spirited out of the country.

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Study Detects Recent Instance of Human Evolution

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently.

Throughout most of human history, the ability to digest lactose, the principal sugar of milk, has been switched off after weaning because there is no further need for the lactase enzyme that breaks the sugar apart. But when cattle were first domesticated 9,000 years ago and people later started to consume their milk as well as their meat, natural selection would have favored anyone with a mutation that kept the lactase gene switched on.

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Emperors in crisis

Roman emperors had to implement drastic reforms in the third century. In order to retain their position of power in this turbulent period they developed an emperor ideology. With this they increasingly laid claim to their dynastic and godly position, says Dutch researcher Janneke de Jong. Using Greek papyrus texts she investigated how the power of Roman emperors was presented and received in Egypt, at that time a Roman province.


De Jong analysed about two-hundred Greek papyrus texts from a digital database containing 4500 documents. Examples are edicts, contracts, petitions, administrative correspondence and censuses. In the third century, Greek was the administrative language in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.

Many ancient texts are dated according to the regnal year of the current emperor, who was referred to by his name and/or titles. De Jong noticed a change in the form of legitimisation the emperors’ power position in the titles. The emperors increasingly emphasised their dynastic position by referring to their sons and future successors in the titles. They also increasingly laid claim to godly support.

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Ancient Irish Tomb Big Draw at Winter Solstice

From December 19 to 23—if the weather cooperates—20 lucky people a day will crowd into an ancient Irish monument's main chamber. There, they'll bathe in 17 minutes of light put off by the rising sun on the shortest days of the year.

This year about 28,000 people applied to take part in the ritual at the Newgrange monument, located in the Irish countryside in County Meath, reports the Brú na Bóinne Visitor Center (Ireland map).

The Stone Age monument dates to around 3200 B.C., making it 500 years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt and a thousand years older than England's Stonehenge.

Archaeologists believe the grass-covered mound in Ireland is a "passage tomb." A tunnel runs to a cavelike chamber, where the remains of the dead were placed. (Related video: "Ireland's Mysterious Newgrange Tomb".)

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WESSEX ARCHAEOLOGY AND FLICKR: HOW WE USE WEB 2.0

Wessex Archaeology is one of the largest commercial archaeological practices in the UK, employing over 160 people. We are a registered charity with educational objectives and play a vital role in helping people learn about their past.

In September 2005, we decided the Wessex Archaeology gallery (on the web) was looking a little long in the tooth. It was using a proprietary ASP gallery script and the process of uploading new photos was a pain. We had to manually create thumbnails, medium and large size versions of each photo, and follow a rigid structure. There was no chance for people to interact with the photos themselves, and the script itself was not particularly reliable.

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Flag fen digs in for £1m grant

THE team behind the most important bronze age site in Europe are making a bid for a £1 million grant.
Flag Fen Bronze Age Centre in Fengate, Peterborough, relies solely on grants and donations to keep up its important archaeological work and growing tourist appeal.

Today, general manager Georgia Butters and her team are hoping to be given the Heritage Lottery Fund cash to make the centre and surrounding 20-acre park – which welcomed more than 14,000 visitors last year – more people friendly.

Ms Butters said the centre had launched a city-wide consultation project to find out exactly what residents want to see introduced.

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Turkish mayor demands cancellation of Ilisu dam project

A Turkish official appealed Thursday for the cancellation of a dam project in his country, saying it would destroy cultural heritage and do little to boost economic development.

"Of course we want economic and social development ... but development should not disregard people, nature and history," said Osman Baydemir, president of the Union of South Eastern Anatolia Municipalities and mayor of Diyarbakir.

The Ilisu dam, on the Tigris River 47 kilometers (30 miles) north of the Syrian border, will be one of the largest dams in Turkey and is scheduled to be completed by 2013. A ground breaking ceremony took place in August.

Opponents of the project say it will flood dozens of towns and destroy archaeological treasures including the medieval fortress city of Hasankeyf, which overlooks the Tigris.

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Ancient ape ruled out of man's ancestral line

The remains of the apeman, dubbed Little Foot, were discovered in a cave complex at Sterkfontein by a local South African team in 1997. Its bones preserved in sediment layers, it is the most complete hominid fossil skeleton ever found.

Little Foot is of the genus Australopithecus, thought by some to be part of the ancestral line which led directly to man. But research by Dr Jo Walker and Dr Bob Cliff of the University of Leeds School of Earth and Environment, with Dr Alf Latham of Liverpool University's School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology, shows the remains are more than a million years younger than earlier estimates.

The team used uranium lead chronology to date the remains. Working on extracts of stalagmite deposits from immediately above and below the body, they dated the skeleton at around 2.2 million years old.

Their findings, published in the American journal Science, are controversial. Earlier estimates had put the age of Little Foot at three to four million years old placing it potentially on a direct line to humans.

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Buried Babies Suggest Prehistoric Compassion

Infants may have been considered equal members of prehistoric society, according to an analysis of burial pits found in Austria.

Two separate pits, one containing the remains of two infants [image] and the other of a single baby [image], were discovered at the same Stone Age camp of Krems-Wachtberg in Lower Austria. Both graves were decorated with beads and covered in red ochre, a pigment commonly used by prehistoric peoples as a grave offering when they buried adults.

Using radiocarbon dating, archaeologists from the Prehistoric Commission of the Austrian Academy of Sciences put the remains at about 27,000 years old.

"Nothing comparable to these burials of such young Upper Paleolithic individuals has been found before," study co-author Christine Neugebauer-Maresch wrote in a recent edition of the journal Nature.

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Computer hilft beim Verständnis der Antike. Ein Kolloquium an der Uni Stuttgart

Berichte antiker Historiker und Geographen, alte Küsten- und Wegstrecken-Beschreibungen sowie die wenigen kartographischen Belege aus antiker Zeit sind wesentliche Ausgangspunkte historisch-geographischer Untersuchungen. Für ihre Interpretation kann die EDV wichtige Beiträge leisten. So können die antike Umwelt mit ihren sozialen, wirtschaftlichen und infrastrukturellen Gegebenheiten oder auch religiöse Landschaften rekonstruiert werden. Auch bei der zeitlichen und räumlichen Verortung der von Historikern beschriebenen Objekte oder bei der Umarbeitung antiker Kartenwerke auf heutige Karten leistet der Computer wertvolle Dienste.

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Photos of the “Church of the Ark”

A site containing 25 excellent photos of the “Church of the Ark”.

(Thanks to Christine who posted this link on Mirabilis)

You can view the photos here. . .

'Little Foot' too young to be our ancestor

The human family tree will have to be redrawn in the wake of a discovery that an apeman skeleton is not as old as originally thought, suggesting it may not be a direct ancestor of humankind.

Known as "Little Foot" and found in 1997 in a cave in South Africa, the skeleton was remarkably complete and thought to be between two million and four million years old, suggesting this kind of hominid could have paved the way for the first tool makers.

With its combination of human and ape-like features, scientists hoped that the well-preserved hands and feet of Little Foot would shed light on when early hominids began using tools and walking upright.

But now the apeman has been dated precisely to 2.2 million years old by scientists at the Universities of Leeds and Liverpool, making it about 400,000 years too young to be a part of man's family tree.

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St Paul's tomb found under altar

The tomb of St Paul the Apostle has been found under one of Rome's largest churches and the stone coffin will shortly be raised to the surface to allow pilgrims to see it.

The remains of St Paul, one of the Christian Church's most important leaders and the supposed author of much of the New Testament, have been hidden under an altar at St Paul Outside-the-Walls for almost 200 years.

"I have no doubt that this is the tomb of St Paul, as revered by Christians in the fourth century," said Giorgio Filippi, the Vatican archaeologist who made the discovery.

Dr Filippi will present the results of his scientific tests on the remains of the saint on Monday at the Vatican. St Paul's sarcophagus was found after five years of extensive excavations at the church, which is second only in size to St Peter's in Rome. Dr Filippi began looking for the tomb at the request of Archbishop Francesco Gioia, within whose jurisdiction the church falls.

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Inquiry opens into fate of Stonehenge visitor centre

ENGLISH Heritage has called on the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Ruth Kelly to seize a once-in-a-generation opportunity' and approve plans for the controversial Stonehenge visitor centre.

It made the plea on Tuesday at the opening of the two-week public inquiry into plans to build the centre on land east of the Countess Road roundabout in Amesbury.

First to give evidence was the chairman of English Heritage, Sir Neil Cossons, who spoke of the importance of Stonehenge and the need for the scheme.

Describing the world heritage site as the "most important, best known and most visited monument in the country", Sir Neil said that English Heritage had developed a proposal that balances conservation and protection of the stones with improving the access and enjoyment that visitors get out of the site.

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Kabul's lost treasure goes on show

A sumptuous trove of ancient Afghan treasure went on show in a Paris museum yesterday after escaping the destruction of the Taleban regime while hidden in vaults under the presidential palace in Kabul.

The items, some dating from the great civilisations before the Roman Empire, owe their survival to a scheme involving seven keys that would have befitted a central Asian fable.

At the heart of the exhibition, in the Guimet museum, is a collection of jewellery, dress and other artifacts of gold and precious stones from the first century AD that were found in 1978 by Soviet archeologists at Tillia-Tepe, in northern Afghanistan.

The “hoard of Bactrian gold”, never before seen in public, had been give up for lost until 2003, when President Karzai announced that it was part of a haul of 21,618 treasures that had been discovered in the presidential vault. French experts have cleaned and restored the 228 objects at the show, which was promoted by President Chirac and President Karzai.

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Lost hoard of 2,000-year-old gold refound

A priceless collection of Afghan gold, thought to have been destroyed by the Taliban, resurfaced in Paris yesterday after mysteriously disappearing almost 20 years ago.

A hundred items from the so-called Hoard of Bactrian Gold – a trove of stunning artefacts from the first century AD – are now on public display in the Guimet museum near the Eiffel tower. The delicate masterpieces include granite or turquoise encrusted necklaces, goblets, cupids, dolphins, dragons, and a thumb-sized ram figurine.

The exhibition, Afghanistan – the Refound Treasures, displays 228 objects dating from 2000 BC to the third century AD. They form part of a hoard of 21,618 items of gold, ivory and precious stone unearthed by archaeologists in 1979 from six Bactrian tombs at a site in Tillya Tepe, in the north of Afghanistan.

For years, experts feared the objects had been spirited out of the country to be sold to private collectors from the bazaars of Peshawar, or melted down and sold to fund Islamic Jihad.

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Digging in for gravel victory

CAMPAIGNERS who fought against plans to extract gravel from land around Dorchester are delighted that their claims to the area's archaeological importance have been vindicated.

They have welcomed news that a team from Oxford University is planning major digs around the village during the next few years because the site is so important.

Chris Gosden, Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford University, said the area had a massive concentration of important archaeology, from pre-history to the present.

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Vatican archaeologists find tomb believed to be that of Apostle Paul

Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul that had been buried beneath Rome's second largest basilica.

The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least A.D. 390, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and was completed last month, the project's head said this week.

"Our objective was to bring the remains of the tomb back to light for devotional reasons, so that it could be venerated and be visible," said Giorgio Filippi, the Vatican archaeologist who headed the project at St. Paul Outside the Walls basilica.

The interior of the sarcophagus has not yet been explored, but Filippi didn't rule out the possibility of doing so in the future.

Two ancient churches that once stood at the site of the current basilica were successively built over the spot where tradition said the saint had been buried. The second church, built by the Roman emperor Theodosius in the fourth century, left the tomb visible, first above ground and later in a crypt.

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Age of archaeology turns 100

From the Grand Canyon to Governors Island, ancient Alaskan villages to Virgin Island reefs, American archaeology is quietly celebrating a centennial.
At two national parks — El Morro (N.M.) and Montezuma Castle (Ariz.) national monuments — simple commemorations Friday will mark 100 years since the federal Antiquities Act was signed by President Theodore Roosevelt.

"The Antiquities Act absolutely was a major step for professional archaeology," says archaeologist Jane Waldbaum, head of the Archaeological Institute of America. "The act raised up the public image of archaeology to a highly responsible one," she says, particularly after Congress chartered her organization two months after the signing of the law June 8, 1906.

"Teddy Roosevelt didn't waste any time," says El Morro superintendent Kayci Cook Collins of the National Park Service. Roosevelt proclaimed 18 national monuments, starting with Wyoming's Devils Tower on Sept. 24, 1906. Most notably, he set aside Arizona's Grand Canyon two years later.

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Digging dog's archaeological find

A dog proved to be a canine Indiana Jones by finding a stone axe head dating back thousands of years in Aberdeenshire.

Rowan the inquisitive black labrador unearthed the Neolithic find at the Drum Estate.

She dropped it on owner Alec Gordon's foot and he took it for examination, with early analysis estimating it as perhaps 6,000 years old.

Mr Gordon said: "I wonder if she knew it was something special."

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Vatican archaeologists unearth St Paul's tomb

Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul that had been buried beneath Rome's second largest basilica.

The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least 390AD, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and was completed last month, the project's head said.

"Our objective was to bring the remains of the tomb back to light for devotional reasons, so that it could be venerated and be visible," said Giorgio Filippi, the Vatican archaeologist who headed the project at St. Paul Outside the Walls basilica.

The interior of the sarcophagus has not yet been explored, but Filippi didn't rule out the possibility of doing so in the future.

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Excavation unearths tomb of the apostle

Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the St Paul.


The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least 390AD, had been buried beneath Rome`s second largest basilica.

It has been the subject of an excavation that began four years ago and was completed last month.

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Gendered Division Of Labor Gave Modern Humans Advantage Over Neanderthals

Diversified social roles for men, women, and children may have given Homo sapiens an advantage over Neanderthals, says a new study in the December 2006 issue of Current Anthropology. The study argues that division of economic labor by sex and age emerged relatively recently in human evolutionary history and facilitated the spread of modern humans throughout Eurasia.

"The competitive advantage enjoyed by modern humans came not just from new weapons and devices but from the ways in which their economic lives were organized around the advantages of cooperation and complementary subsistence roles for men, women, and children," write Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner (University of Arizona).

Kuhn and Stiner note that the rich archaeological record for Neanderthal diets provides little direct evidence for a reliance on subsistence foods, such as milling stones to grind nuts and seeds. Instead, Neanderthals depended on large game, a high-stakes resource, to fuel their massive body mass and high caloric intake. This lack of food diversity and the presence of healed fractures on Neanderthal skeletons--attesting to a rough-and-tumble lifestyle--suggest that female and juvenile Neanderthals participated actively in the hunt by serving as game drivers, beating bushes or cutting off escape routes.

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Rare Greek Antiquities Go on Display

Warned that the barrage of Persian arrows would hide the sun at Thermopylae, the Spartan hero Dienekes replied with cool bravado, It will be pleasant to fight in the shade.

Known for their terse, unflinching way of speaking, these consummate warriors from the Lakonia region of Greece were known as laconic, or sparing of words. The term also applies to their art.

'Athens-Sparta,' opening Wednesday at the Onassis Cultural Center, presents 289 archaeological artifacts from the paramount city states of ancient Greece to illustrate their very different social and artistic legacies.

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Roman "Curse Tablet" Discovered in England

Archaeologists in Leicester, England, have recently uncovered a treasure trove of Roman and medieval artifacts, including a 1,700-year-old Roman "curse tablet."

Curse tablets were metal scrolls on which ancient Romans wrote spells to exact revenge for misdeeds, often thefts of money, clothing, or animals.

Such tablets have been discovered previously in Britain, often near ancient Roman temple sites, but this is the first one to be found in Leicester (see United Kingdom map).

The Leicester tablet, which was uncovered near the ruins of a large Roman townhouse dating from the second century A.D., was found unrolled. Curse tablets were typically rolled up and nailed to posts inside temples or shrines.

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Neandertals Turned to Cannibalism, Bone Cave Suggests

Struggling for survival, Neandertals turned to cannibalism—even brain-eating—some 43,000 years ago, says a new study of mutilated bones discovered in a Spanish cave.

The fossil remains also suggest that these prehistoric humans looked different from their northern counterparts.

Bones from at least eight individuals showed clear signs of cannibalism, including defleshing, dismemberment, and skinning, according to the study team.

The report provides some of the clearest evidence yet that Neandertals (often spelled "Neanderthals") ate their own kind, says paleoanthropologist Antonio Rosas of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid. Rosas is the lead researcher for the study, which is published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Neanderthal man was driven to cannibalism

An unusual haul of Neanderthal bones has disclosed how our beetle-browed cousins eked out such a meagre existence that they were probably driven to eat each other.

Evidence of cannibalism has come from the analysis of samples from 43,000-year-old remains in north-west Spain.


Fossilised clay contains the footbones and ribs of Neanderthal man found in Asturias
Antonio Rosas of the National Museum of Natural Science in Madrid and colleagues led by Javier Fortea of Oviedo University excavated an underground cave system at El Sidrón, in Asturias, where eight Neanderthal skeletons have been found in the past six years.

"What is absolutely new is to find remains of at least eight individuals concentrated in a very small space inside the cave, and more importantly, with virtually no animal remains" said Dr Rosas. "This is really strange."

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Hungry Neanderthals 'ate each other'

Neanderthal Man was a cannibal who supplemented a meagre diet with occasional meals of meat from his own species, new research has suggested.

An analysis of Neanderthal bones and teeth from 43,000 years ago has revealed important details of their diet and lifestyle, including some of the best evidence yet for cannibalism among the close relatives of modern human beings.

Many of the skeletons found in a cave at El Sidrón, in Asturias, Spain, carry cut marks consistent with having been butchered for meat, scientists studying the remains of eight Neanderthal individuals have found.

Other long bones from the arms and legs have been broken apart, apparently to remove nutritious bone marrow to eat, and some of the skulls show signs of having been opened to get at the brains.

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SHREWSBURY MUSEUM REVEALS RARE IRON AGE SPOONS

There are only 23 more of them in the world and it's been 80 years since anybody found some before these ones turned up.

What are these rare artefacts? They are mysterious bronze spoons, always found in pairs, dating from 800 BC – 100 AD, and Shrewsbury Museum is the proud owner of the most recently discovered set.

Local metal detectorist Trevor Brown found the spoons in mid-Shropshire in 2005, and reported them to the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Archaeologists recognised the spoons as coming from the Iron Age, but what they were used for is uncertain.

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Like being a highly evolved species? Thank a woman.

At least that's the word from the most recent edition of Current Anthropology. Here's a brief write-up on a new theory of why humans may have advanced beyond their Neanderthal cousins:

Kuhn and Stiner note that the rich archaeological record for Neanderthal diets provides little direct evidence for a reliance on subsistence foods, such as milling stones to grind nuts and seeds. Instead, Neanderthals depended on large game, a high-stakes resource, to fuel their massive body mass and high caloric intake.

This lack of food diversity and the presence of healed fractures on Neanderthal skeletons -- attesting to a rough-and-tumble lifestyle -- suggest that female and juvenile Neanderthals participated actively in the hunt by serving as game drivers, beating bushes or cutting off escape routes.

The Middle Paleolithic Neanderthal record also lacks the artifacts commonly used to make weather-resistant clothing or artificial shelters, such as bone needles. Thus, it was the emergence of "female" roles -- subsistence and skill-intensive craft -- that allowed H. sapiens in ecologically diverse tropical and sub-tropical regions to take advantage of other foods and live at higher population densities.

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Did starving Neanderthals eat each other?

Neanderthals lived a desperately tough life, sometimes so close to starvation that when one of them died their compatriots would fall upon the body and devour it, according to new research.

Scorned as clumsy, idiotic brutes with little in the way of developed culture, our pitiless modern view of Neanderthals may be tempered by new findings that provide insight into the terrible life our evolutionary cousins faced.

Antonio Rosas, of the National Museum for Natural Sciences in Madrid, Spain, and colleagues studied 43,000-year-old Neanderthal remains found in the El Sidrón cave in the north of the Iberian peninsula.

The cave is extraordinarily rich in Neanderthal remains. About 1300 Neanderthal fossils have been excavated since its accidental discovery in 1994. And the picture emerging from analysis of the remains is now enriching our understanding of the much-maligned species.

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Neanderthals Were Cannibals, Study Confirms

Neanderthals suffered periods of starvation and may have supplemented their diet through cannibalism, according to a study of remains from northwest Spain.

Paleobiologists studied samples from eight 43,000-year-old Neanderthal skeletons excavated from an underground cave in El Sidrón, Spain since 2000. The study sheds light on how Neanderthals lived before the arrival of modern humans in Europe.

Researchers found cut marks and evidence that bones had been torn apart, which they say could indicate cannibalism.

"There is strong evidence suggesting that these Neanderthals were eaten," said the study's lead author, Antonio Rosas of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid. "That is, long bones and the skull were broken for extraction of the marrow, [which] is very nutritious."

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Hungry ancients 'turned cannibal'

Starvation and cannibalism were part of everyday life for a population of Neanderthals living in northern Spain 43,000 years ago, a study suggests.

Bones and teeth from the underground cave system of El Sidron in Asturias bear the hallmarks of a tough struggle for survival, researchers say.

Analysis of teeth showed signs of starvation or malnutrition in childhood and human bones have cut marks on them.

Details appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Emperor's artefacts unearthed in Rome

ITALIAN archaeologists have unearthed remarkably well-preserved imperial insignia that belonged to Emperor Maxentius and were buried for safekeeping after he was defeated by his Christian rival Constantine.

Excavation under Rome's Palatine Hill near the Colosseum turned up items including three lances and four javelins that experts said were striking for their completeness - digs usually turn up only fragments - and the fact that they are the only known artefacts of their kind.

Some of the objects, which accompanied the emperor during his public appearances, are believed to be the base for the emperor's standards - rectangular or triangular flags, officials said. An imperial sceptre with a carved flower and a globe, and a number of glass spheres, believed to be a symbolic representation of the earth, also were discovered.

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Emperor Maxentius Insignia Found in Rome

Archaeologists have unearthed what they say are the only existing imperial insignia belonging to Emperor Maxentius _ precious objects that were buried to preserve them and keep them from enemies when he was defeated by his rival Constantine.

Excavation under Rome's Palatine Hill near the Colosseum turned up items including three lances and four javelins that experts said are striking for their completeness _ digs usually turn up only fragments _ and the fact that they are the only known artifacts of their kind.

Clementina Panella, the archaeologist who made the discovery, said the insignia were likely hidden by Maxentius' people in an attempt to preserve the emperor's memory after he was defeated by Constantine I in the 321 A.D. battle of the Milvian Bridge _ a turning point for the history of the Roman empire which saw Constantine become the unchallenged ruler of the West.

"Once he's lost, his objects could not continue to exist and, at the same time, could not fall in the hands of the enemy," she said Friday.

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ANGER AS SHOP FILLS IN HISTORIC WELL

MEMBERS of Stratford-upon-Avon Town Council and the Stratford Society reacted in anger to news this week that national chemist Superdrug filled in a medieval well at their new High Street shop without consultation.

Town councillor Maureen Beckett said yesterday she and other councillors had heard the news in dismay after Tuesday’s meeting and instructed town clerk Sarah Summers to find out if the council could take action.

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Ancient body prompts new theories

A Roman sarcophagus discovered near Trafalgar Square could lead to the map of Roman London being redrawn.

The limestone coffin containing a headless skeleton was found during excavations at St-Martin-in-the-Fields Church, central London.

The find, which dates from around 410AD, lies outside what were the city walls of Roman London.

Archaeologists previously thought Westminster possibly contained Roman roads but not sacred buildings.

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Insignia of Emperor Maxentius Unearthed

Archaeologists have unearthed what they say are the only existing imperial insignia belonging to Emperor Maxentius - precious objects that were buried to preserve them and keep them from enemies when he was defeated by his rival Constantine.

Excavation under Rome's Palatine Hill near the Colosseum turned up items including three lances and four javelins that experts said are striking for their completeness - digs usually turn up only fragments - and the fact that they are the only known artifacts of their kind.

Some of the objects, which accompanied the emperor during his public appearances, are believed to be the base for the emperor's standards - rectangular or triangular flags, officials said.

An imperial scepter with a carved flower and a globe, and a number of glass spheres, believed to be a symbolic representation of the earth, also were discovered.

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'Church of the Ark' found on West Bank

Archaeologists claimed yesterday to have uncovered one of the world's first churches, built on a site believed to have once housed the Ark of the Covenant.

The site, emerging from the soil in a few acres in the hills of the Israeli occupied West Bank, is richly decorated with brightly coloured mosaics and inscriptions referring to Jesus Christ.

According to the team, led by Yitzhak Magen and Yevgeny Aharonovitch, the church dates to the late 4th century, making it one of Christianity's first formal places of worship.

"I can't say for sure at the moment that it's the very first church," said Mr Aharonovitch, 38, as he oversaw a team carrying out the final excavations before winter yesterday. "But it's certainly one of the first." He said the site contained an extremely unusual inscription which referred to itself, Shiloh, by name.

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Prehistoric bones found on beach

HUMAN bones discovered on a beach on Barra after a storm have been confirmed as dating from nearly 4,000 years ago.

After almost a year of investigation by Historic Scotland and archaeologists, the remains of 13 people, dating from 1880BC and 1490BC, were found.

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Neanderthal vs Neandertal

With the recent spate of news articles about our nearest human neighbor, much discussion has been up about how you should spell the name, with a 'th' or with a 't'. Originally I felt it was a no-brainer to stay with the 'th', because 1) that's what most people recognize, 2) no matter how you spell it, it's still pronounced Nee-an-der-tall, and 3) if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But I am just a public archaeologist and on most issues of such earth-shattering importance will waver if pressed. Here's a few links to what other bloggers are saying, and your opportunity to make your opinions known.

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Ancient Greek computer reveals its secrets

A bronze calculating machine salvaged from a shipwreck a century ago is finally yielding up its secrets, revealing a Greek computer of remarkable sophistication for a device constructed long before the birth of Christ.

Scholars have been baffled by the 80-plus fragments of the ancient mechanism found in 1901 by sponge divers in a Roman shipwreck near the island of Antikythera, midway between the Peloponnese and Crete.

Around the size of a discus, the device was so badly corroded that it had the consistency of flaky pastry and was encrusted with deposits. Yet it seemed to be the earliest-known machine involving an arrangement of gear-wheels, built centuries before such technology became commonplace.

Was it a rich man's toy? Or was it an orrery or an astronomical clock? Or something else that reflected an ancient interest in astrology?

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Ancient Moon 'computer' revisited

The delicate workings at the heart of a 2,000-year-old analogue computer have been revealed by scientists.

The Antikythera Mechanism, discovered more than 100 years ago in a Roman shipwreck, was used by ancient Greeks to display astronomical cycles.

Using advanced imaging techniques, an Anglo-Greek team probed the remaining fragments of the complex geared device.

The results, published in the journal Nature, show it could have been used to predict solar and lunar eclipses.

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Mysteries of computer from 65BC are solved

A 2,000-year-old mechanical computer salvaged from a Roman shipwreck has astounded scientists who have finally unravelled the secrets of how the sophisticated device works.

The machine was lost among cargo in 65BC when the ship carrying it sank in 42m of water off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. By chance, in 1900, a sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck and recovered statues and other artifacts from the site.

The machine first came to light when an archaeologist working on the recovered objects noticed that a lump of rock had a gear wheel embedded in it. Closer inspection of material brought up from the stricken ship subsequently revealed 80 pieces of gear wheels, dials, clock-like hands and a wooden and bronze casing bearing ancient Greek inscriptions.

Since its discovery, scientists have been trying to reconstruct the device, which is now known to be an astronomical calendar capable of tracking with remarkable precision the position of the sun, several heavenly bodies and the phases of the moon. Experts believe it to be the earliest-known device to use gear wheels and by far the most sophisticated object to be found from the ancient and medieval periods.

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Skeleton find

THE remains of skeletons dating back hundreds of years have been unearthed at a Weston church.

Diggers moved into the grounds of St John the Baptist Church in Lower Church Road last week to start work on a £460,000 church centre.

But during the excavations workmen disturbed the resting places of some former Weston residents. Shards of a late iron age jar have also been found at the site.

Reverend Richard Taylor said: "We always knew it was likely there would be a former burial ground there. We had an initial exploratory dig on the site seven months ago which concluded we were likely to find remains.

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Man held for 'pharaoh relic' sale

A man has been arrested in France after advertising what he said was a lock of hair from Egypt's Pharaoh Ramses II for sale on the internet.

The man said he had obtained the relic when his father worked on the pharaoh's mummy in France in the 1970s.

Police seized small plastic sachets and boxes from the home of the man in the French Alpine town of Grenoble.

The items have to be tested, but some experts said it was possible that the unnamed man's claims were true.

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Skeletons preserved to aid study of forensic science

A UNIQUE Scottish collection of the skeletal remains of babies and young children is to be preserved to help forensic anthropologists.

The collection will help research into unsolved crimes and the identification of children killed in natural disasters.

The Scheuer Collection is believed to be the world's only active repository for juvenile skeletal remains and includes the bones of 100 individuals. Some of the bones, collected from archaeological and historical anatomical sources, are hundreds of years old.

Named after Louise Scheuer, the eminent anthropologist who gathered the bones for study 14 years ago, the collection is still held at Dundee University's unit of human anatomy and forensic anthropology, headed by Professor Sue Black, who was the lead anthropologist in the British forensic team deployed to war-torn Kosovo in 1999.

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Stolen Dacian bracelet to be brought back to Romania

The golden Dacian bracelet found in September at one of the Grand Palais Biennial Exhibition stands in Paris will be brought back to Romania by December 15, and exhibited at the National History Museum of Romania (MNIR) in Bucharest.

“By December 15, the Dacian gold bracelet found in Paris will be brought to the National History Museum. The item will continue to act as evidence in the pending lawsuit,” says Virgil Nitulescu, adviser to the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs (MCC).

According to the official, several Romanian experts will be sent to Paris to analyse the bracelet. Romanian and French authorities believe the item to have been stolen from the Sarmisegetuza Regia archaeology site in Orastiei Mountains. The item is put at EUR 1.5 M.

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Hungarian archaeologist discovers tablet mentioning Masada's destroyer

In 73 CE, the Roman governor of Judea, Flavius Silva, laid siege to Masada with Legion X Fretensis. When the walls were broken down by a battering ram, the Romans found the fortress' defenders had set fire to all the structures and preferred mass suicide to captivity or defeat. Masada has since become part of Jewish mythology, as has the name Silva, who Josephus Flavius mentions in his writings. It is therefore no great surprise that Hungarian archaeologist Dr. Tibor Grull, studying in Israel three years ago, was excited to discover a stone tablet during a visit to the Temple Mount with a Latin inscription of the name of Masada's destroyer.

Grull asked officials of the Waqf, the Muslim trust for the Temple Mount, where the tablet came from, and they explained it had been found in the large hole dug in the mount in 1999 when the entrance to Solomon's Stables was opened. The Hungarian archaeologist received rare permission to photograph and document the finding. In October 2005, Grull published the discovery in the journal of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research.

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Volunteers peel back Pan’s past

For the past 9 weeks, enthusiastic amateur archaeologists and metal detectorists have gathered at Pan, Newport to join in the investigation of two large fields on either side of Pan Lane. Each Saturday groups of between 10 and 25 volunteers have lent a hand, searching the fields for clues to Pan’s past. And there were plenty! Hundreds of objects have been washed, marked and sorted to see what they can tell us about the area.

It is clear that people have lived here for thousands of years. On the very first session sharp-eyed volunteer Dawn Russell picked up a flint tool which is at least 4,000 years’ old! Jane Roberts of Wessex Archaeology said “It’s difficult to spot a small piece of worked flint in the mud, amongst lots of other stones. The volunteers were really keen and we had to persuade them to take a beak!”

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Ancient Egyptian Drama on TAC

TRIAL OF A MUMMY
Location: Egypt Length: 23 min.

This is the fictional story of Khonso-Imhep, Head Musician of the Pharaoh's court during the 18th Dynasty, as he passes from life into the afterworld, complete with a trial that determines his fate. Through re-enactments and imagery on wall paintings, this film depicts the ancient Egyptian mummification process and the religious rituals involved in preparing a dead body. This story displays the unique funeral ceremonies surrounding the preparation of a mummy and portrays the religious beliefs involved, as well as the mummy's discovery by archaeologists.

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Roman Amphitheatres & spectacula - a 21st Century Perspective

16th - 18th February 2007, The Grosvenor Museum, Chester

This unique conference will range across all aspects of study of the Roman Amphitheatre and the spectacula that took place there. The event offers specialists and non-specialists alike an unrivalled opportunity to access the very latest research and thinking from many different perspectives.

The conference will discuss the discovery of new amphitheatre sites, and recent excavation and survey work, aspects of the architecture and planning of the buildings, amphitheatres both at the frontier periphery and at the centre of the Empire; from Northern Europe through Spain, the east, and North Africa. It will examine functional, religious and social aspects of the buildings and the spectacles, aspects of the organisation of the spectacles, and gladiatorial death and burial. The problems encountered in the preservation and display of amphitheatres as monuments in the modern urban environment will be touched upon. The Conference will feature speakers from the USA, Canada, Brazil, Austria, Germany, Spain and the UK, and will start with a keynote public lecture given by Professor Kathleen Coleman of Harvard University – ‘The Arena of conflict: facts, myths and speculation about gladiatorial combat in ancient Rome.’

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Broken leg may have killed Tutankhamun

A medical scan of King Tutankhamun's mummified corpse may have finally nailed the cause of the Egyptian pharaoh's premature death. It was not a blow to the head, as some had speculated, but gangrene caused by a badly broken leg.

A team of radiologists used a sophisticated 3D X-ray of Tutankhamun's body to identify what may have happened to the boy king before he died 3,300 years ago at about the age of 19.

Computed tomography (CT) scans of the pharaoh's mummy, presented yesterday to the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of America in Chicago, confirmed a possible fracture in the boy's femur, or thigh bone, which probably occurred just before he died. Ashraf Selim, a radiologist at the Kasr Eleini Teaching Hospital at Cairo University, said there was no evidence of a skull fracture caused by a blow to the head - a suggestion made after previous X-rays taken in 1968 - but the broken leg may have been serious enough to kill the pharaoh.

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A Layered Look Reveals Ancient Greek Texts

An ambitious international project to decipher 1,000-year-old moldy pages is yielding new clues about ancient Greece as seen through the eyes of Hyperides, an important Athenian orator and politician from the fourth century B.C. What is slowly coming to light, scholars say, represents the most significant discovery of Hyperides text since 1891, illuminating some fascinating, time-shrouded insights into Athenian law and social history.

“This helps to fill in critical moments in ancient classical Greece,” said William Noel, the curator of manuscripts and rare books at the Walters Art Museum here and the director of the Archimedes Palimpsest project. Hyperides “is one of the great foundational figures of Greek democracy and the golden age of Athenian democracy, the foundational democracy of all democracy.”

The Archimedes Palimpsest, sold at auction at Christie’s for $2 million in 1998, is best known for containing some of the oldest copies of work by the great Greek mathematician who gives the manuscript its name. But there is more to the palimpsest than Archimedes’ work, including 10 pages of Hyperides, offering tantalizing and fresh insights into the critical battle of Salamis in 480 B.C., in which the Greeks defeated the Persians, and the battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C., which spelled the beginning of the end of Greek democracy.

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Brushing up on Neanderthal tooth fossils

Skulls and teeth are so important to fossil scholars that they regularly label every other kind of bone they dig up as "post-cranial." Post-cranial as in leg bones, arm bones, ribs — the body's whole kit and caboodle, sans the stuff north of the chin. A new study of Neanderthal teeth serves up an example of why the cranial bones are so often the most important ones to researchers struggling to understand ancient creatures.

Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis, were a species of archaic humans who lived in Europe and the Middle East hundreds of thousands of years ago. They disappear from the fossil record most recently around 30,000 years ago, about the time that early modern humans, Homo sapiens, started to spread across the continent. A long-raging disagreement among paleoanthropologists has concerned whether early humans straight-out replaced Neanderthals, the majority view, or else interbred with them.

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CyArk: Digital Heritage Archaeology

The CyArk project is an ambitious plan to place digital images--maps, plans, three-dimensional views--of world heritage sites in one place. Funded primarily by the Kacyra Family Foundation, CyArk currently has images on some of the better known sites from around the world, including Salvador da Bahia (Brazil), Ankgor (Cambodia), Thebes (Egypt), the Cathedral of Beauvais (France), Tikal (Guatemala), Pompeii (Italy), Chavin de Huantar and Tambo Colorado (Peru) and Deadwood and Mesa Verde (the United States). Each archaeological site studied has a short film introduction, clickable thumbnail photographs of rooms at the site and a site plan; many have three-dimensional images of site details such as rooms and profiles and a few have computer-generated reconstructions.

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Stonehenge was a site for sore eyes in 2300BC

Stonehenge was the Lourdes of its day, to which diseased and injured ancient Britons flocked seeking cures for their ailments, according to a new theory.

For most of the 20th century archaeologists have debated what motivated primitive humans to go to the immense effort of transporting giant stones 240 miles from south Wales to erect Britain's most significant prehistoric monument.

Stonehenge was built in different stages between 3000BC and 1600BC and theories about their meaning and purpose have ranged from the serious to the wacky. The most widely accepted view is that it was to honour their ancestors.

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IRON AGE SCOTS FUR FARM CLUE

IRON Age man reared foxes to make fur-trimmed clothes, archaeologists believe.

Experts say the pelts were used to make sought-after fur-trimmed coats, loin cloths and blankets.

Researchers at York University found that foxes flourished on Orkney during the late Iron Age.

But there were none on the Outer Hebrides or Shetland, suggesting they were introduced to Orkney.

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New clues about Ptolemaic past

AN inscription has been found by archeologists conducting excavations in the Lower City of Amathus that provides new information about Cypriot society in the Ptolemaic period, a statement from the Antiquities Department said yesterday.

The inscription was found on the floor of the interior doorway connecting two rooms and is as old as 3rd century BC. Although it is quite worn, it consists of 12 verses and is one of the longest texts from the Hellenistic period discovered in Cyprus. This inscription with arithmetic in Greek may refer to land portions given by the Ptolemaic General. It appears that it was laid in the floor in secondary use. Once the inscription is studied further, it is expected to provide more information about that period.

Another noteworthy find was a large gold cross that must have belonged to a high ranking official of the early Byzantine period (7th century AD). It was discovered in the complex of rooms with few fragments of paintings on the walls, and a lot of coins were found on the floor in the same room with the cross. The official may have resided in the room or in the entire complex.

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Ancient settlements discovered in Anatolia

Researchers working on the Archaeological Settlements in Turkey (TAY) project have discovered 120 previously unknown ancient settlement areas in various locations in eastern Anatolia, the project's manager said. Assistant Professor Alparslan Ceylan, a lecturer at Erzurum's Atatürk University and the project's leader, said that the 120 settlement areas, thought to belong to the Iron Age, included a temple and several fortresses. Ceylan said inventories for 480 ancient settlements in the region - including the newly discovered sites- were also prepared as part of the project, which has been under way for the last one-and-a-half years.

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Authenticity of Ilkley rock carvings challenged

Elaborate rock art which for years is believed to have been created by prehistoric Ilkley man (West Yorkshire, England) was probably only created about 170 years ago, it has been revealed. A Victorian workman could have been responsible for some of the markings on one of Britain's most famous examples of prehistoric rock art.

Ilkley archaeologist Gavin Edwards says he has proof which suggests the cup and ring markings on the town's internationally-known Panorama Stones were tampered with by a workman called Ambrose Collins in about the 1870s. He said the ladder-shaped markings are what has made the design on the largest of the three stones, the most elaborate example of bronze-age' art in the UK - but he seriously doubts they are the real thing. He got suspicious when he was studying sketches of marked stones which were donated to the town museum in 1880. He said: "The ladders were not on the drawing. Because I feel the ladders are so prominent it's difficult to believe they could not possibly have been noticed or been omitted by artistic licence. There has been talk of this Victorian embellishment before but people have really not wanted to acknowledge or admit tampering could have happened. It will cause a debate but the bigger, the better."

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Sky disc of Nebra shines in Basel

The oldest representation of the cosmos – the sky disc of Nebra – has gone on show in Basel's history museum. Basel (Swiss) has a special place in the disc's history. It was here that police seized the disc after it was stolen from its place of origin in Germany. The disc, which forms the centrepiece of an exhibition devoted to Bronze Age objects, has been hailed as one of the most important archaeological discoveries of recent times. Made out of bronze with gold embossing, the 3,600-year-old object is an astronomical clock. It connects the sun and the moon calendars together, with the sun giving the day and year and the moon, the month. The moon year is, however, 11 days shorter than the sun year. This was taken into account in ancient times by adding an extra month, leading experts to believe that people in the Bronze Age were already making sophisticated astronomical observations similar to those written about by the Babylonians around 1,000 years later.

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Mining Ancient Molars

For the first time, researchers have been allowed to slice through Neandertal teeth. This coup is providing the best evidence yet that these creatures grew and developed at the same slow rate as modern children. Neandertals even had enough time to complete most of the development of their large brains in childhood, like modern humans.

Some paleoanthropologists have proposed that Neandertals grew up faster than modern humans so they could become fertile sooner. This would have helped ensure they would produce enough offspring to survive in the frigid climate of Europe 200,000 to 28,000 years ago, but it would have provided less time for brain development as children. In contrast, modern humans inhabited the warmer climes of Africa and western Asia until they swept into Europe 40,000 years ago. They may have lived longer as adults, enabling them to delay becoming parents so they could prolong their childhood and develop larger brains. A 2004 study supported this hypothesis by showing that Neandertals' front teeth grew faster than those of modern humans, indicating the species reached adulthood more rapidly (ScienceNOW, 28 April 2004).

A challenge came in 2005, after another team of researchers used the same method to count layers of enamel on the outside surface of Neandertal front teeth. But they also applied the method to modern humans from around the globe and found that the Neandertals' tooth development fit within the range for the diverse modern humans. Hence, both Neandertals and modern humans appeared to have similar childhood development patterns (ScienceNOW, 19 September 2005). Still, the study was limited because front teeth cannot provide detailed information about daily growth rates.

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History centre 'to open in 2007'

Work on an £11.6m history centre in Swindon has been completed, with the building due to open next October.

The centre will have seven miles of shelving for documents charting the history of Wiltshire and Swindon over the last seven centuries.

This archive is currently held at the Record Office in Trowbridge.

Access to the new centre in Chippenham will be improved through larger reading rooms and better internet facilities, Wiltshire County Council said.

An education room for schools will also be provided.

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Dramatic shift from simple to complex marine ecosystems occurred 250M years ago at mass extinction

The earth experienced its biggest mass extinction about 250 million years ago. New research shows that this mass extinction did more than eliminate species: ecologically simple marine communities were largely displaced by complex communities

Field Museum, James Cook University scholars uncover a profound, yet overlooked ecological change in the history of life

EurekAlert -CHICAGO: The earth experienced its biggest mass extinction about 250 million years ago, an event that wiped out an estimated 95% of marine species and 70% of land species. New research shows that this mass extinction did more than eliminate species: it fundamentally changed the basic ecology of the world's oceans.

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