Ancient Graveyard Said Found in Denmark

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) - Archaeologists have discovered a Roman cemetery from about 300 A.D. in suburban Copenhagen with about 30 graves, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

"It is something special and rare in Denmark to have so many (ancient Roman) graves in one place," archaeologist Rune Iversen was quoted as saying by the Roskilde Dagblad newspaper.

The graveyard's exact location in Ishoej, southwest of downtown Copenhagen, was being kept secret until the archaeologists from the nearby Kroppedal Museum have completed their work, the newspaper wrote. No one at the museum could be immediately be reached for comment.

Archaeologists found necklaces and other personal belongings, as well as ceramics for containing food.

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Rome celebrates its stage history

The first exhibition devoted entirely to Roman theatre has opened in the ruins of the Colosseum in Rome.

The ruins of more than 1000 ancient theatres are scattered over the territories of the former Roman empire from North Africa to Northern Europe and from the Near East to Spain.

The Greeks and the Etruscans were the first to hold public theatre performances of tragedies and comedies in arenas scooped out of a hillside, or in temporary wooden structures.

But it was the Romans who first developed mass entertainment on the grand scale in huge purpose-built theatres built of stone on flat sites.

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Time team joins the dig

A television crew is helping to uncover the secrets of an iron age hill fort.

County archaeologists have spent months digging the dirt at Credenhill Park Wood.

But they were given a helping hand by the Time Team, who spent a day filming in the county as part of a planned documentary on hill forts in the UK.

The wooded hill is the site of one of the largest three hill forts in the country, and digging is currently taking place to determine its extent.

With the help of students from Cardiff University, a number of trenches have been dug, revealing pottery, Roman coins and possible saw pits.

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'Europe's oldest city' found in Cadiz

Archaeologists in Spain's southern port of Cadiz believe they have found remains which prove that it is Europe's oldest inhabited city – Phoenician Gadir, or Gades in Roman times.

Remnants of walls have emerged seven metres deep in a dig beneath Cadiz's old town centre which have been dated to the 8th century BC. Scientists found shards of Phoenician pottery, and pieces of jars, bowls and plates once used in everyday life which all point towards the existence of a town. A well-preserved bronze brooch has also appeared, suggesting a high level of civilisation. Previous finds, including funeral relics, did not provide conclusive evidence of urban settlement.

"We need to excavate further to see where these walls go," said the director of the dig, Juan Miguel Pajuelo. "The existence of items of daily use suggests the walls were of houses."

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Unearthing Rome's king

Italian archeologists have uncovered the ruins of a 2,700 year old sanctuary which they say provides the first physical evidence of Rome at the time of Numa Pompilius, Rome’s legendary second king, in the 8th century BC.

Numa Pompilius, a member of the Sabine tribe, was elected at the age of forty to succeed Romulus, the founder of Rome. He reigned from 715-673 BC, and is said by Plutarch to have been a reluctant monarch who ushered in a 40-year period of peace and stability. He was celebrated for his wisdom, personal austerity and piety.

Clementina Panella, the archeologist from Rome’s Sapienza University who is leading the dig, said Numa Pompilius was also known to have established religious practices and observance in the emergent city state, instituting the office of priest or pontifex and founding the cult of the Vestal Virgins. She said the temple or sanctuary her team had uncovered lay between the Palatine and Velian hills, close to the Colosseum, the Arch of Titus and Via Sacra, and had probably been dedicated to the Goddess of Fortune.

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Turkish historic olive oil factory ‘reborn’ as museum

A historical building which served as an olive oil factory for 200 years and was later used as camel shelter, a gin factory and woodshed in Muğla’s Milas district will be converted, with the help of the Milas Museum project, into what will be the most modern museum in the Aegean, luring both local and foreign tourists to the region.

The building is owned by one of the most distinguished families of Milas. The protected area where the historical building is located is estimated to cost $500,000 alone and covers an area of 14,000 square meters.

Milas Museum director Erol Özen said the historic factory has been idle for 30 years. “We will convert the ancient factory into a museum where we will display the artifacts excavated in and around Milas. We will also restore the olive oil factory, which will be able to work traditionally as it used to work in its time, so that the visitors will view the process of olive oil production,” he said.

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Important Ancient Artefacts Found in Bulgaria's Perperikon

The team of archaeologists of the famous Bulgarian Professor Nikolay Ovhcarov has unearthed three unique artefacts from the different epochs of the ancient city Perperikon.

The three artefacts were unearthed during the four-month excavations of the team, Professor Ovcharov himself announced at a Wednesday press conference.

The first artefact is a bronze sword dated back to the 13-12 century BC. Such swords were used in the Trojan War, the professor explained.

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British university forced to return 'looted' Iraq treasure

One of Britain's leading universities is embroiled in an embarrassing row over hundreds of treasures looted from Iraq.

Found scattered around ancient Mesopotamia, the Aramaic incantation or devil bowls were placed upside down in homes during the sixth to eighth centuries to trap evil spirits. The spells, and information such as the names of the home owners, are not found in any other source. One collection contains the earliest examples of the Bible in Hebrew.

Anther collection is at the centre of a legal row that has divided Britain's academic community. Since the first Gulf War in 1990, Iraq has been a looters' paradise. The United Nations introduced a sanction in 2003 making it illegal to handle artefacts from the country. So when University College London came into possession of 654 bowls, the biggest collection in the world, which it loaned from a private collector, suspicions were raised.

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Meterdicke Mauern und 2000 Jahre alte Nägel erzählen Geschichte

Mit einer genauen Vermessung und Lageaufnahme der ausgegrabenen Fundamentmauern ist Mitte September die erste Grabungswoche der Limes-Akademie Naturpark Altmühltal an der Villa Rustica in Walting zu Ende gegangen.
Mauern des römischen Gutshofes bei Walting

„Eine erneute Luftbildaufnahme kann in Kombination mit der Vermessungsaufnahme entzerrt werden“, erklärt Massimo Kimelmann, Leiter der Außenstelle Eichstätt des Vermessungsamtes Ingolstadt, das in Walting kostenlos Amtshilfe leistete. Und: Eine Wiederausgrabung sei dann mit Hilfe von GPS-Technologie völlig unproblematisch. Das ist vor allem wichtig, da noch nicht völlig klar ist, wie es mit der Waltinger Ausgrabung weitergehen wird – zur Zeit laufen die Verhandlungen mit dem Grundstückseigentümer.

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Tewksbury Medieval Festival

The Companions of the Black Bear, organisers of the annual Tewksbury Medieval Festival say that the turning medieval for the weekend could help put Tewkesbury back on the tourist map. Next year is their 25th anniversary and they want the whole town to join in, making it bigger and better than ever.

They are already planning a number of events leading up the festival weekend of July 12 and 13, and a jousting display and huge procession through the town for the actual weekend.

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Greeks Go for All the Marbles In Effort to Get Back Artifacts

A New Museum's Goal: To Press the British to Return Parthenon Sculptures

ATHENS -- On Saturday, huge cranes will begin lifting ancient statues, carvings and architectural fragments off the Acropolis, down to a new museum built at the base of the most famous citadel in the world. For the vast majority of these stone remnants of the great age of Athens, it will be the first time they have ever left this rocky summit.

Even as the forces of history washed over this city for millennia, making and unmaking it according to the dictates of three major religions and at least a half-dozen empires, these stone gods and heroes, which once decorated its temples and public spaces, have remained close to their original home. That makes them the lucky ones.

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The new museum, designed by architect Bernard Tschumi, has proved controversial from the start. The old Acropolis museum, a low and ugly space built next to the Parthenon, has long been deemed inadequate. Three earlier efforts to build a new museum, in 1976, 1979 and 1989, failed after becoming mired in legal, archaeological and political conflicts. The current museum, which required the expropriation of 25 buildings, has been in the works since 1997, and again legal difficulties delayed it -- so much so that the plan to open in time for the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics is now ancient history.

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Ancient rune stone found

Archeologists were very pleasantly surprised to discover an unknown rune stone under the floor of Hauskjeen church in Rennesøy, Rogaland in western Norway.

The rune stone likely stems from the 11th century, and tells of Halvard's powers or Halvard's magnificence. The stone slab has been broken off at both ends, and the text ("Mæktir haluar") is just a small part of the original inscription.

Archeologists from the Archeological Museum in Stavanger thought at first that they had rediscovered a rune stone documented in 1639 and 1745, but closer examination revealed that the stone has not been reported before.

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Archaeologists stumble on sensational find

Prokuplje -- Serbian archaeologists found evidence of what could be the oldest metal workshop in all of Europe.

According to National Museum archaeologist Dušan Šljivar, experts found a “copper chisel and stone ax at a location near Prokuplje in which the foundation has proven to be 7,500 years old, leading us to believe that it was one of the first places in which metal weapons and tools were made in prehistoric times.”

Archaeologists hope that this find in southern Serbia will prove the theory that the metal age began a lot earlier than it was believed to have, Šljivar told Beta news agency. He leads the team of archaeologists that have been investigating the site over the past decade.

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Ancient world treasure unearthed

After seven hot summers of digging, an Italian archaeological team believe they have discovered one of the most important sites of the ancient world.

Fanum Voltumnae, a shrine, marketplace and Etruscan political centre, was situated in the upper part of the Tiber river valley.

It lies at the foot of a huge outcrop of rock, upon which is perched the mediaeval city of Orvieto.

A walled sanctuary area, 5m-wide (16ft) Etruscan roads, an altar, and the foundations of many Roman buildings that have laid buried for two millennia have been discovered.

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Schoolchildren ’dig it’ thanks to Time Team and Ordnance Survey

A dozen schoolchildren from across Britain, who won a competition run by Ordnance Survey, spent the day with Channel 4's Time Team to help discover the remains of a Roman villa.

The lucky winners met with presenter Tony Robinson and the rest of Time Team in Gloucestershire, where an exciting dig had already begun for the show's new series. The winners were able to tour the trenches and be on hand as a beautiful Roman mosaic, ancient coins and pottery were uncovered.

The competition was run as part of the national mapping agency's annual Free maps for 11-year-olds initiative, which offers every Year 7 pupil in the country a free map. It is one of the largest educational resource initiatives of its kind, with up to 750,000 pupils benefiting from a gift of a detailed OS Explorer Map each year. Winners had to answer questions on map symbols and suggest a special site for a Time Team dig.

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Viking longhouse project is right on track

MANY hands are making light work of an ambitious £78,000 living history project at the Ard Whallan outdoor education centre.

After months of fundraising, work began in April to build an authentic Viking longhouse on the slopes overlooking West Baldwin, designed to give a taste of life in the Island 1,000 years ago.

It will eventually form part of a Viking homestead where school parties will be able to make clothes and furniture, as well as cook, weave and tend to hens and sheep.

The Department of Education-led project required a lot of tough physical labour to build solid dry-stone walls and sturdy wicker fences by hand, but staff from Scottish Provident International Life Assurance (SPILA) were happy to help.

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Scans reveal lost gravestone text

Illegible words on church headstones could be read once more thanks to a scan technology developed in the US.

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon university are making high resolution 3D scans of tombstones to reveal the carved patterns in the stone.

A computer matches the patterns to a database of signature carvings which reveals the words.

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Dig unearths part of city's Viking times

The secrets of Norwich's past are being unearthed as part of archaeological digs in the north of the city - where city walls which date back to the Vikings have been discovered.

Archaeologists have discovered remains from the city's old walls, dating back from the 10th century, as part of excavation work being carried out in the Botolph Street area, near Anglia Square.

The work, which started two weeks ago, is being carried out in advance of a planning application to assess what lies under the ground and is expected to continue until early November.

It is believed the discovery of the ancient city walls reveals Norwich's historic links with the Vikings.

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Silent victims of the sea: rising tides threaten archaeological sites

When the Neolithic farmers and hunters of Skara Brae first built their stone houses on Orkney, they were careful to place their settlement more than a mile from the coast to avoid their homes being pounded by the harsh winter storms that sweep across the Bay of Skaill.

Some 5,000 years later, the custodians of Europe's most complete prehistoric village no longer have the luxury of land to shelter them from the sea. Slowly but surely, erosion has brought the sea ever closer to the grey rock-built dwellings and now spray from the wind-whipped Atlantic regularly soaks the World Heritage Site.

A concrete seawall built in 1926 to protect Skara Brae is crumbling and before too long the water will break through the dunes and flow behind this archaeological treasure, in effect turning it into an island and putting it at greater danger from the encroaching tides. Such is the scale of the risk to the site that its managers have even discussed moving it stone by stone inland.

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75 Medieval Entombments Discovered in Veliki Novgorod

Russian archeologists have found 75 ancient graves (dating from the 15th to 18th cc) at the digging site of the necropolis by Nikolo-Dvorishchenskiy Cathedral in Veliki Novgorod.

According to the Moscow archeologist and anthropologist Denis Pezhemsky, the digging works have been on from early July and more entombments are expected to be found.

The remnants of the ancient Novgorod dwellers are kept in sarcophagi, which are of great historical value. Some tombs are probably family ones, because several people were buried together, Denis Pezhemski says.

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Neanderthals roamed as far as Siberia

DNA extracted from skeletal remains has shown that Neanderthals roamed some 2000 kilometres further east than previously thought.

Researchers say the genetic sequence of an adolescent Neanderthal found in southern Siberia closely matches that of Neanderthals found in western Europe, suggesting that this close relative of modern humans migrated very long distances.

Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues examined skeletal remains found in the Okladnikov cave in the Altai Mountains and dated as between 30,000 and 38,000 years old . Until now, archaeologists have been unable to determine whether the remains belonged to Neanderthals or another species of extinct hominid because the bones are too fragmented.

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Gormley signs order to protect monument near Tara

Environment Minister John Gormley has signed a temporary order to preserve a prehistoric monument that campaigners say is being threatened by the M3 motorway in Co Meath.

The controversial motorway was supposed to be 100 metres away from the Rath Lugh promontory fort, but opponents of the road say the fort was being directly impacted by levelling works.

Mr Gormley has now signed an order to protect the site on the recommendation of archaelogist Conor Newman, an expert on the Tara valley.

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Life was the pits 4000 years ago

BRONZE Age pits have been unearthed that shed fresh light on life on the banks of the Forth 4000 years ago.

Archaeologists carrying out a routine inspection found pottery and eight small pits in a routine inspection of a site in South Queensferry.

Melanie Johnson, project manager for archaeologists CFA, said the discovery off Echline Avenue came out of the blue.

She said: "It didn't look too promising when we started out on this site. But we then found pottery which we could tell was around 4000 years old buried in small pits which were around half a metre deep.

"It was a surprise when we found this, and it helps fill in a lot of gaps and gives us an idea of what life was like here 4000 years ago."

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Cabin from Viking Era Discovered in West Fjords?

An archeological expedition on the island Hrútey in Mjóifjördur fjord in Ísafjardardjúp, the West Fjords, have revealed the ruins of a cabin which may have been built during the Viking Era.

According to Ragnar Edvardsson, an archeologist at the West Fjords’ Natural Science Center, diggings had revealed an oval building structure with a double layer of rocks and turf in between that can at least be traced back to the Middle Ages.

“Such thick walls could indicate that the building derives from the Viking Era,” Edvardsson told Morgunbladid. “It was obviously a place where someone lived, probably in relation to mountain dairy farming.”

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Archaeologists discover portable altar

Archaeologists have uncovered a one thousand-year-old portable altar at an excavation site in Varnhem in western Sweden.

The stone object was found resting on the skeleton of a heavy set man believed to have been a priest.

Archaeologist Maria Vretemark from Västergötland's Museum describes the miniature altar as "a fabulous find".

"When a priest travelled around to say mass in areas where there weren't many sacred altars, he would bring with him this little stone.

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Mines to be cleaned up in the ruins of Karkamış

A 6,000 square-meter mine field located near the ruins of Karkamış, one of the most important cities of the Ancient Near East, in the Gaziantep region will be cleaned up for archaeological excavations after permission was granted by the General Staff Gaziantep Special Provincial Administration.

Provincial Administration Secretary General Abdulkadir Demir said Japanese Prince Tomohito Mikasa, who is also an archaeologist, had applied in person to the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism to unearth the ruins in Karkamış. He said works had started in the region after following his application, adding that the ruins, most part of which are in Syria, would be cleaned up.

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Ancient Fishermen Lured Fish With Fire

Fishermen around areas mentioned in the New Testament worked the night shift, suggests fishing gear found in a 7th century shipwreck off the coast of Dor, Israel, west of Galilee, where Jesus is said to have preached.

The standout item among the found gear is a fire basket, the first evidence for "fire fishing" in the ancient eastern Mediterranean. Early images and writings indicate fires were lit in such baskets, which were suspended in giant lantern devices from the end of fishing boats.

Light emitted from the fire both attracted and illuminated fish, as well as other sea creatures, like octopus, which men then speared or captured in nets.
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Donegal men believed to have been the first High Kings of Ireland

There is strong evidence to suggest that the first kings of Ireland came from Donegal, a leading archaeologist has claimed.

Brian Lacey, Chief Executive of the Discovery Programme, will explore his theory in detail when he speaks at the upcoming Beltany Heritage Conference in Raphoe.

Dr Lacey is one of two leading archaeologists who will speak at the conference.

The archaeologist appointed to monitor developments at the proposed route of the M3 motorway through Tara, Dr Conor Newman, will be the main speaker.

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Fisch oder Fleisch?

Mit einem neuen methodischen Ansatz wird am Wilhelmshavener Forschungszentrum TERRAMARE, Zentrum für Flachmeer-, Küsten- und Meeresumweltforschung e.V., untersucht, was norddeutsche Bronzezeitler auf dem Teller hatten. Die Fettsäurezusammensetzung von Speiseresten in bronzezeitlichen Scherben soll darüber Aufschluss geben. Derzeit werden erste Voruntersuchungen ausgewertet. Ein umfangreicheres Projekt ist geplant.

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Grab your toga: Roman bath for sale at £300,000

A ROMAN bath house with remains of plunge pools, steam rooms and clothes lockers is for sale in the town of Battle, East Sussex. Built for officers of the Roman navy in about AD90, the baths are on the market for a modest £300,000.

Although the property is hardly in a fit state for a toga party, it contains remains that rarely come up for sale. “The level of preservation in the baths is particularly high,” said Paul Roberts, ancient monuments inspector at English Heritage. “They were buried by a landslide so, although the building is ruinous, we have all the material in pieces.”

The baths were excavated in 1970 by Gerald Brodribb, an amateur archeologist who identified the remains with divining rods and set about digging with a team of 40 enthusiasts.

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Report: Herod's Temple Quarry Found

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli archaeologists on Sunday said they have discovered a quarry that provided King Herod with the stones he used to renovate the biblical Second Temple compound - offering rare insight into construction of the holiest site in Judaism.

The source of the huge stones used nearly 2,000 years ago to reconstruct the compound in Jerusalem's Old City was discovered on the site of a proposed school in a Jerusalem suburb.

Today, the compound Herod renovated houses the most explosive religious site in the Holy Land, known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims.

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10,000 historic sites at risk from climate change

MORE THAN 10,000 of the most important ancient and historical sites around Scotland's coastline are at risk of being destroyed by the storms and rising sea levels that will come with global warming.

Sites in jeopardy include the neolithic settlement of Skara Brae on Orkney and the prehistoric ruins at Jarlshof on Shetland. Others under threat range from Viking burial boats to Iron Age brochs and Mesolithic middens.

New surveys for Historic Scotland reveal that the remains of communities up to 9000 years old could be lost for ever due to accelerating coastal erosion.

The potential loss is incalculable and has alarmed experts. "This is a uniquely valuable and totally irreplaceable part of the nation's cultural heritage, with much still to teach us about our past," said Tom Dawson, an archaeologist at the University of St Andrews.

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'Hobbit' wrists 'were primitive'

Careful study of the "Hobbit" fossil's wrist bones supports the idea that the creature was a distinct species and not a diseased modern human, it is claimed.

Matthew Tocheri and colleagues tell Science magazine that the bones look nothing like those of Homo sapiens; they look ape-like.

The announcement in 2004 detailing the discovery of Homo floresiensis caused a sensation.

Some researchers, though, have doubted the interpretation of the find.

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'Hobbit' wrist bones suggest a distinct species

The tiny, human-like creature living and using tools in Indonesia just 18,000 years ago really was a distinct species, not just a malformed modern human.

That is the clear implication of a new study of the so-called "hobbit". It states that the creature had wrist bones almost identical to those found in early hominids and modern chimpanzees, and so must have diverged from the human lineage well before the origin of modern humans and Neanderthals.

Palaeontologists have battled bitterly over the diminutive skeleton ever since its discoverers described it as a new species, Homo floresiensis, three years ago.

Its exceptionally tiny brain simply did not fit with the current understanding of human evolution, particularly since no other hominid fossils in the last 3 million years, and none outside of Africa, had such a small brain.

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FIND OUT ABOUT ROMAN TIMES

Museum visitors will be able to step back in time tomorrow to find out what it was like to be a Roman soldier in Exeter 2,000 years ago.There will be an opportunity to meet Roman soldiers, ask them about their kit and weapons and try on replica armour at a family fun day at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum.

The event is free of charge and the museum's learning team will be on hand with its Roman handling collections.

People will be able to find out about Exeter's Roman past through handling real and replica items - some almost 2,000 years old.

Children will be able to try on costumes, write on wax tablets and have a go at mosaic-making.

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Tara activists take campaign to US

Campaigners battling the development of the M3 motorway near the historic Hill of Tara will take their protest to the US this weekend.

Members of the Save Tara campaign group protesting in Dublin last weekend. Image: Irish Times.

Poets, musicians, historians and archaeologists will join the Save Tara group outside the Consulate General of Ireland in New York tomorrow. At the same time, protests will be held in Chicago, Los Angeles and Dublin.

Tara, in the heart of Co Meath, was earlier this year placed on the World Monuments Fund (WMF) list of the world's 100 most endangered sites.

Bonnie Burnham, the WMF president, said the site is hugely important. "Tara Hill, which is the centerpiece of a large archaeological landscape with hundreds of significant sites, is the ceremonial and mythical capital of Ireland," she said.

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Car park dig for medieval castle

Volunteers are helping archaeologists search for signs of a medieval castle thought to be under a village car park.

Researchers believe the castle once stood at the site in Maenclochog at the foot of Pembrokeshire's Preseli Hills.

Villagers are working with professional archaeologists for two weeks in a bid to find out more about the land.

A topographical survey of the site last year suggested the site was probably that of the castle and possibly an earlier Iron Age fortification.

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Human ancestor had mix of primitive, modern traits

The earliest-known human ancestors to migrate out of Africa possessed a surprising mix of human-like and primitive features, according to scientists who studied remains dug up at a fossil-rich site in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

Writing on Wednesday in the journal Nature, the scientists described remains of three adults and one adolescent dating from about 1.77 million years ago, excavated at Dmanisi, about 55 miles southwest of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

The remains shed light on a little-understood but critical period in human evolution -- the transition from the more ape-like creatures known as australopithecines to the genus Homo, of which modern humans are a member.

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Treasure trove of Homo erectus found

A trove of the oldest human skeletal bones outside Africa is reported in Nature this week — a find that will help researchers to improve their understanding of the biology of the 1.8-million-year-old hominins.

The work, led by researchers from the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi, describes three-dozen fossils from the skeletons of four primitive Homo erectus individuals found in recent years at Dmanisi in Georgia, central Asia.

H. erectus is thought to have migrated across Asia after coming out of Africa, where the oldest relative of man is traced to nearly 7 million years ago. H. erectus fossils have been found from Africa across Asia as far as Indonesia. Typically there are only a few scattered fossils at one location. A single site with so many bones from so many individuals is rare. And they date back to very soon after H. erectus's exodus from Africa.

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Bid to find Stonehenge of the North

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL dig to try to uncover the secret surrounding the "Stonehenge of the North" got under way in Cadeby this week.

Entitled the "Cadeby Henge Project", history enthusiasts hope that the excavation will uncover evidence of an ancient stone circle that dates back to 2000 BC.

It is thought there could be as many as 20 stones, ranging from 15 to 20ft high, buried just underneath the surface.

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Lost in a Million-Year Gap, Solid Clues to Human Origins

Sometimes the maturity of a field of science can be measured by the heft of its ambition in the face of the next daunting unknown, the mystery yet to be cracked.

Neurobiology probes the circuitry of the brain for the secrets of behaviors and thoughts that make humans human. High-energy physics seeks and may be on the verge of finding the so-called God particle, the Higgs boson thought to endow elementary particles with their mass. Cosmology is confounded by dark matter and dark energy, the pervasive but unidentified stuff that shapes the universe and accelerates its expansion.

In the study of human origins, paleoanthropology stares in frustration back to a dark age from three million to less than two million years ago. The missing mass in this case is the unfound fossils to document just when and under what circumstances our own genus Homo emerged.

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Treasure trove of H. erectus fossils outside Africa could fill gaps in human evolution

Palaeontologists have discovered a treasure trove of the oldest human skeletons outside Africa, a find they say may fill crucial gaps in the story of our evolution, and help improve our understanding of the biology of the 1.8 million year old hominins.

London, Sept 20 : Palaeontologists have discovered a treasure trove of the oldest human skeletons outside Africa, a find they say may fill crucial gaps in the story of our evolution, and help improve our understanding of the biology of the 1.8 million year old hominins.

The work, led by researchers from the Georgian National Museum in Tbilisi, describes three-dozen fossils from the skeletons of four primitive Homo erectus individuals found in recent years at Dmanisi in Georgia, central Asia.

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Archaeologist Finds Rare High Medieval Bulgarian Inscription in Monastery

Bulgarian archaeologist Professor Kazimir Popkonstantikov announced Wednesday he has found a thrilling inscription in ancient Bulgarian language at the wall of a stone tomb near the town of Veliki Preslav.

The inscription on the tomb's wall was found during his research of a monastery dated back to the 10th century.

This is Professor Popkonstantinov's second finding of such an inscription after more than 50 years. The inscription informs that the monk Sinkel was buried there, and while still alive he served as the personal secretary of the patriarch.

Popkonstantinov stumbled upon the inscription while researching the monastery. The stone plate which covers the tomb is 2,2 metres long and 1,2 wide. The sepulchre chamber is divided into two sections with different size, where monks from the monastery had been buried.

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Romans march again

THE Romans marched through Middlewich again at the weekend 2,000 years after they first arrived.

Crowds watched the legion stride through the town as history was brought to life at the third Middlewich Roman Festival.

Car parks were full and caterers ran out of food due to the popularity of the event.

Dave Thompson, one of the organisers, said: "We don't know the exact numbers that attended but we're pretty confident it broke all records.

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Mammoth finds mean big money for the bone hunters of the Arctic Circle

CHERSKY Prehistoric bones are not hard to find in the northernmost reaches of Siberia. The permafrost is thawing so rapidly that in some places in the tundra, the bones of lions, mammoths and woolly rhinos poke out through the soil every few metres. The storage room of the Ice Age Museum in Moscow, above, where Alexander Svalov holds a mammoth bone, is packed with examples.

The company that runs the museum holds government licences allowing it to excavate and export prehistoric relics. Private collectors and scientific institutes – from the United States to South Korea – will pay huge sums for the right specimen.

A well-preserved tusk, Mr Svalov says, can sell to private collectors for up to $20,000 (£10,000), while a reconstructed mammoth skeleton can fetch between $150,000 and $250,000.

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Ancient city of Tabea being unearthed

Archaeological excavations will bring the ancient city of Tabea to light, Denizli Governor Hasan Canpolat said following a visit to the site in Denizli's Kale province.

Canpolat visited the excavation area with Kale provincial administrator, Ömer Dağdeviren, Kale mayor, Abdullah Karaayvaz, and Denizlli Culture and Tourism provincial director, Mehmet Korkmaz. He said the excavations had started at three different points in the ancient city. �Tabea is an area which people have settled since the distant past. It will be pretty difficult for our team to excavate the region that shelters many civilizations. We have cleaned the cistern and mosque in the region over the last 20 days. Excavations will continue in the coming years,� he added. Canpolat noted that the ancient city of Tabea was very significant in terms of the history and archaeology of the region. He said, �it is possible to see traces of many civilizations in the ancient city. As the excavations proceed and go deeper, very important findings will be unearthed. That is why we attach great importance to these excavations.�

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Ancient Scots Mummified Their Dead

The ancient Egyptians were not the only ones to mummify their dead, according to a study in this month's Antiquity Journal that claims prehistoric Scottish people created mummies too.

The researchers do not think the Egyptians influenced the Scots, but that mummification arose independently in the two regions.

Initial evidence for Scottish mummies was announced in 2005, when archaeologists unearthed three preserved bodies — an adult female, an adult male and an infant — buried underneath two Bronze Age roundhouses in South Uist, Hebrides, at a site called Cladh Hallan. The bodies date to between 1300 and 1500 B.C.

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CAMPAIGNERS FIGHT TO SAFEGUARD RUINS

Heritage campaigners are fighting to ensure one of the oldest church sites in Leicestershire will not be damaged by developers.

English Heritage and Enderby Heritage Group fear the precious 10th century ruins of St John's Church would be ruined if developers build 54 homes next to it.

Group members want more archeological work to ensure there are no undiscovered historic foundations close by.

They also believe an abandoned village could be around the former Clark's Garage site, close to Enderby's police headquarters.

Heavy goods vehicles and machinery may destroy ancient stones and artifacts, they say.

English Heritage has also written to Blaby District Council with similar concerns.

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A prickly subject

For our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the hedgehog was meat for the pot. Today, it is an acquired taste - acquired by combing the verges of roads

So, archaeologist Dr Fairchild of the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff has revealed that, 6,000 years ago, hedgehog was one of the choice or, more accurately, opportunistic meat finds for the Sunday roast. Our ancient ancestors may possibly have expressed their hairy lip-smacking and furry finger-licking appreciation of its unique culinary merits with deep hedgehog mimicking grunts of guttural satisfaction; but the question that needs answering is, what exactly does it taste like?

With the language and poetic yearnings to express themselves, how might aspiring Oz Clarks of the stone age have grappled with the highly subjective nature of taste and smell in describing the culinary pleasure of hedgehog munching? No doubt comparatives would abound - descriptive words and names drawn from a range of creatures now long extinct. Yet, to answer our question, we must turn to stories of gypsies, crisps, modern-day roadkill and contemporary edible beasts.

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ANTHROPOLOGY FIELD NOTES 3

Location: Worldwide Length: 37 min.

In this series of interviews with today's news-makers, host Faith Haney of Central Washington University explores cultural anthropology and archaeology. In the third episode, Faith visits with anthropologist Dr. Karl Heider, of the University of South Carolina. Dr. Heider is a film-maker and author and a pioneer of visual anthropology. His research among the Dani people of New Guinea is documented in the famous ethnographic film, Dead Birds. The interview closes with footage from his 1964 film, Dani Sweet Potatoes

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Big Freeze Didn't Kill Off Neandertals, Study Says

Climate change might have had a hand in the demise of the Neandertals, but it wasn't the main culprit, a new study says.

The research is the latest contribution to a longstanding debate as to what finally did in the ancient human species some 30,000 years ago.

Now a team led by Polychronis Tzedakis of the University of Leeds in England says it has detected no extreme climate shifts during the time the Neandertals (often spelled "Neanderthals") disappeared.

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Yet Another Thracian Tomb Unearthed in Bulgarian Village

Bulgarian archaeologists unearthed an ancient Thracian tomb during the weekend while making urgent excavations near the village of Cherniche.

The team of Georgi Nehrizov, a specialist in Thracian history and culture with the Bulgarian Archaeology Institute, stumbled absolutely accidentally on the tomb.

The sepulchre is dated back to the 4-3 century BC. The burial chamber with two-slope surface of the walls is completely intact. It is 2 metres long, 1,8 metres wide and 2 metres high.

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Head Case

Two fossils found in Kenya raise evolutionary questions

For anthropologist Fredrick Manthi, there could be no better birthday present than finding a piece of a Homo erectus skull.

That is precisely what he got on August 5, 2000, while searching for fossils near Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. A bit of bone poking through dirt at his feet turned out to be a 1.55 million-year-old calveria, or brain case. This fossil and another unearthed during the same dig are raising new questions about human evolution.

The calveria's comparatively diminutive size suggests that H. erectus wasn't as similar to Homo sapiens as has been believed, Manthi and several colleagues contend in the Aug. 9 issue of Nature. The second fossil, a 1.44 million-year-old jawbone from an early hominin called Homo habilis, indicates that H. erectus coexisted with H. habilis, rather than being its descendant. Habilis fossils found in the past were much older than the new one.

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Archaeologists discovering "Prague Pompeii"

Czech archaeologists are sure of the existence of "Prague Pompeii" beneath the Old Town Square whose existence would largely complicate the possible completion of Prague's Old-Town Hall, Lidove noviny (LN) writes Saturday.

According to archaeologists, a lost world is buried below the Old Town Square and adjacent streets. They say they are sure of the existence of remnants of Romanesque Prague, such as torsos of houses, palaces and old residences deep below the surface.

Archaeologists and town-planners have known about the existence of "Prague Pompeii" for decades from old maps and historical town plans, which have, however, fallen into oblivion.

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Bronze Age burial site unearthed

A Bronze Age burial site has been unearthed by archaeologists working at a quarry in Cambridgeshire.

The find was made at Pode Hole Quarry, in Thorney, near Peterborough, where a child's skeleton has been uncovered.

Teams had already discovered the 3,500-year-old remains of a man at the quarry, in July.

Archaeologist Andy Richmond said the find was significant as it helped to piece together the history of life on the edge of the Fens.

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Roman grave at Englands Corfe Castle excites archaeologists

A suspected Roman grave at Corfe Castle in Dorset County, England has excited archaeologists.

A suspected Roman grave at Corfe Castle in Dorset County, England has excited archaeologists.

Michiel Bil, a Government worker from Holland, who is also a part of a metal detectors' club, accidentally made the discovery.

"I found the large piece of lead and stone and I was very excited because I had my suspicions that it might be a coffin. I called the archaeologist over and they also were excited and now it will be properly dug up this weekend and filmed on TV," said Bil.

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Treasure trove is found in Cumbria

AN ALADDIN’S cave of treasure has been found in Cumbria.

A medieval silver brooch, 16 coins and 253 bits of broken Viking silver went before a treasure trove inquest in Penrith this week when south and east Cumbria coroner Ian Smith declared them officially treasure.

The brooch, which is more than 10 per cent silver, was found on farm land in the Lupton area in April 2006 by metal detectorist Carol Handley.

“It was a stray find in soil,” said Dot Bruns, finds liaison officer for Cumbria.

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Iron age site found at school

EVIDENCE of an Iron Age settlement has been found at a school near Winchester.

A routine inspection at Kings Worthy Primary School, prior to the start of work on a £1.3m extension project, alerted archaeologists.

Then, during August, evidence of an Iron Age settlement was uncovered. It included the discovery of flint, thought to be used for skinning fish, sheep bones and pottery.
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There was also evidence found of ancient track ways, post holes from houses and a grain store.

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Archaeologists hunt fire disaster

Archaeologists have begun digging in Nottinghamshire to search for evidence of a medieval disaster.

Records show that Mansfield Woodhouse and its church were devastated by fire in September 1304 - but little else is known about the event.

The excavation team said they want to expand some of the details about how extensive the damage really was.

Over the next few weeks a series of trenches will be dug near St Edmund's Church to investigate signs of burning.

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Rain uncovers Viking treasure trove

A bout of torrential rain left a surprising legacy in the garden of one Swede: a Viking treasure trove.

Two coins were uncovered by the rain on the lawn of farmer Tage Pettersson, on the island of Gotland, in early August. He called in Gotland's archaeologists, who last week found a further 52 coins on the site.

Most of the coins are German, English and Arabic currency from the late 900s and early 1000s. But archaeologists are most excited about the presence of six very rare Swedish coins, from the reign of Olof Skötkonug, king of Sweden from 994-1022.

One of the Swedish coins has never been found in Sweden before, although an example has been found in Poland. One of the other coins is only the second of its kind to have been found.

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Colosseum is menaced by vandals again

The Colosseum, symbol of the Eternal City and one of the world’s most famous monuments, is at risk from vandalism and graffiti, Rome’s city authorities said yesterday.

Visitors to the 1st-century amphitheatre are taking away “chunks of stone” as souvenirs despite the presence of guards and surveillance cameras, according to Angelo Bottini, the Superintendent of Archaeology for Rome.

He said that most of the five million tourists who visited the Colosseum annually behaved responsibly. But others covered it in graffiti, left their rubbish behind and picked up bits of Ancient Roman wall or paving.

“Nothing surprises me any more,” said Professor Bottini. He said he had started an inquiry and was asking police to reinforce patrols and closed-circuit television surveillance at the Colosseum and the adjoining Roman Forum, where tourists also pocketed souvenirs.

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Ancient Shells Harden Link Between Climate Change and Greenhouse Gases

A new method for analyzing fossilized shells confirms link between carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and warmer oceans

Domatoceras, a precursor of the squid with a hard shell, thrived 443 million years ago during the early Silurian period. More than 100 million years later during the Carboniferous period, Pentamerus, a clamlike, two-shelled invertebrate, clustered on ocean floors. Both stored rare isotopes of carbon and oxygen in their calcium carbonate shells that then fossilized. By examining the percentage of such bonded rare isotopes, scientists have now confirmed the link between carbon dioxide levels and warmer ancient climates.

Certain isotopes of carbon and oxygen have extra neutrons, specifically 13C and 18O, which find each other more easily at cooler temperatures. Because scientists know the favorable bonding conditions, the number of such pairings in ancient shells provides a thermometer for different periods.

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'Super-scope' to see hidden texts

The hidden content in ancient works could be illuminated by a light source 10 billion times brighter than the Sun.

The technique employs Britain's new facility, the Diamond synchrotron, and could be used on works such as the Dead Sea Scrolls or musical scores by Bach.

Intense light beams will enable scientists to uncover the text in scrolls and books without having to open - and potentially damage - them.

The research was presented at the British Association science festival.

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British foods date back thousands of years

CARDIFF, Wales, Sept. 14 Archaeologists said that ancient Britons had a diet that included delicacies like roast hedgehog and nettle pudding.

Researchers from the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff said that the nettle pudding is, in fact, the earliest one known in the British Isles, dating back 8,000 years. Nettles were mixed with barley flour, salt and water and added to the stew pot to cook like dumplings.

Ruth Fairchild, who heads the research team, told The Times of London that another pre-Roman dish was a stew of bacon, fish, milk and cream. About 6,000 years ago, Neolithic cooks prepared a mix of meat and fat cooked in intestines that is the ancestor of haggis, blood pudding and similar dishes.

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Traces of 2,400-year-old Greek wreck found near Albania

SARANDA, Albania (AP) — Encrusted with tiny shells and smelling strongly of the sea, a 2,400-year-old Greek jar lies in a saltwater bath in Durres Museum, on Albania's Adriatic coast.

Part of a sunken shipment of up to 60 ceramic vessels, the 26-inch storage jar, or amphora, was the top find from what organizers say is the first archaeological survey of this small Balkan nation's seabed, conducted by U.S. and Albanian experts.

"Touch it, touch it. It's luck," said mission leader George Robb of the Key West, Florida-based RPM Nautical Foundation. "You're touching something that was made before Plato was born."

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Neanderthals 'not killed by climate change'

Whatever it was that sealed the fate of the Neanderthals, it looks unlikely to have been climate change. That is the verdict of a new study that used climate records from Venezuela to deduce what happened at the Neanderthals' last stand at the southern tip of Europe.

The research suggests that a switch to a cold, dry climate was probably not the telling factor in the demise of the Neanderthals, because of all the probable dates for their extinction, most do not lie near major cold events in the climate record.

Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) lived in Europe until around 30,000 years ago — not long after Homo sapiens arrived on the scene 40,000 years ago. The Neanderthals are thought to have lasted longest in the region around Gibraltar, off the southern tip of Spain.

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Mystery of the nearly men: New thinking on an old conundrum

Once we thought of them as mere brutes. But a series of recent discoveries shows the Neanderthals in a haunting new light. Steve Connor reports on a dark skeleton in humanity's cupboard

Much has been unearthed about Neanderthal Man since a skull and bones were famously dug out of the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf in 1856. But not since that date has there been such excitement about this archaic form of humanity. He was a thick-set, muscular sort with a tough jaw, but diminutive chin. Not very tall, but with more intelligence than originally given credit, the Neanderthal occupied much of Europe for about 200,000 years prior to the arrival of anatomically modern humans – our own species, Homo sapiens.

Yet there is one enduring puzzle about this early cousin of ours that is now engaging scientists in frenzied debate. If the Neanderthal managed to survive for so long and lived through an ice age, what caused them to disappear? Was it, as some have suggested, a period of intense climate change that even they could not adapt to?

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Neanderthal theory challenged

Scientists have ruled out climate change as a possible cause of extinction in the Neanderthals, research reveals.

The Neanderthals, recognised as an archaic form of human since their discovery in the early 19th century, inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia for more than 100,000 years, but their extinction has been a contentious issue among scientists.

Some believe that competition with modern humans led to their extinction, whereas others maintain that climatic conditions were to blame.

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Iron Age relics found during building work at school

EVIDENCE of an Iron Age settlement has been found at a Hampshire school.

A routine inspection at Kings Worthy Primary School, near Winchester, uncovered evidence prior to the start of work on a £1.3m extension project.

Discoveries included flint - thought to be used for skinning fish - sheep bones and pottery, as well as evidence of ancient track ways, post holes from houses and a grain store.

Stash Kozlowski, head teacher at the school, said: "For three weeks there were about six archaeologists busy discovering evidence of a settlement.

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Treasure found in Cumbria

A medieval silver brooch, 16 coins and 253 bits of Viking silver went before a treasure trove inquest in Penrith yesterday when south and east Cumbria coroner Mr Ian Smith declared them officially treasure.

The brooch was found on farm land in the Lupton area in April 2006 by metal detectorist Carol Handley.

Dot Bruns, finds liaison officer for Cumbria, said: “It was a stray find in soil. It was broken in three small pieces.”

Experts say the brooch dates back to the late 13th century.

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Artvin hosts its first archaeological digs

A 10-member team led by Osman Aytekin of Yüzüncü Yıl University in the southeastern city of Van kicked off the first archeological excavations at Şavkat Castle in the Black Sea province of Artvin on Aug. 29.

�Shedding light on the history of the castle means shedding light on the history of the entire Artvin area and the region,� Aytekin told the Anatolia news agency.

He said the excavations were a first in Artvin and important in terms of protecting the region from treasure seekers. �The excavations kicked of in line with a government decision. So the castle and the area will be protected and will not face further threat from treasure seekers,� he said, adding that the work on the site will continue in the upcoming years.

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Experts ponder twilight of the Neanderthals

Paris - The great "whodunnit of palaeontology" has been given a new twist with findings that our enigmatic cousins, the Neanderthals, were in all likelihood not killed off by a mini Ice Age, as some authorities contend.

Neanderthals, smaller and squatter than Homo sapiens, as anatomically modern man is called, lived in parts of Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East for around 170 000 years.

All traces of these mysterious hominids vanish from the record around 28 000 to 30 000 years ago, and the cause of this disappearance has sparked a fierce difference of opinion among palaeontologists.

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New evidence on the role of climate in Neanderthal extinction

THE mystery of what killed the Neanderthals has moved a step closer to resolution after an international study led by the University of Leeds has ruled out one of the competing theories – catastrophic climate change – as the most likely cause.

The bones of more than 400 Neanderthals have been found since the first discoveries were made in the early 19th century. The finds suggest the Neanderthals, named after the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf, where they were first recognized as an extinct kind of archaic humans, inhabited Europe and parts of western Asia for more than 100,000 years.

The causes of their extinction have puzzled scientists for years – with some believing it was due to competition with modern humans, while others blamed deteriorating climatic conditions. But a new study published today in Nature has shown that the Neanderthal extinction did not coincide with any of the extreme climate events that punctuated the last glacial period.

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Underwater survey nets traces of 2,400-year-old Greek wreck off southern Albania

SARANDA, Albania: Encrusted with tiny shells and smelling strongly of the sea, a 2,400-year-old Greek jar lies in a saltwater bath in Durres Museum, on Albania's Adriatic coast.

Part of a sunken shipment of up to 60 ceramic vessels, the 67-centimeter (26-inch) storage jar, or amphora, was the top find from what organizers say is the first archaeological survey of this small Balkan nation's seabed, conducted by U.S. and Albanian experts.

"Touch it, touch it. It's luck," said mission leader George Robb of the Key West, Florida-based RPM Nautical Foundation. "You're touching something that was made before Plato was born."

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Turns out Neanderthals had good oral hygiene

MADRID (Reuters) - Two molar teeth of around 63,400 years old show that Neanderthal predecessors of humans may have been dental hygiene fans, the Web site of newspaper El Pais reported on Tuesday.

The teeth have "grooves formed by the passage of a pointed object, which confirms the use of a small stick for cleaning the mouth," Paleontology Professor Juan Luis Asuarga told reporters, presenting an archaeological find in Madrid.

The fossils, unearthed in Pinilla del Valle, are the first human examples found in the Madrid region in 25 years, the regional government's culture department said.

Neanderthals were predecessors of modern humans who inhabited much of Europe, North Africa and parts of Asia from about 125,000 to 30,000 years ago.

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Turkish dam threatens historic site

The ancient city of Hasankeyf is perched on rock, towering above the river Tigris.

It is a spectacular setting filled with monuments to multiple civilisations.

The caves at the very top are 3,000 years old.

More recent sandstone mosques in the valley below testify to a time when Hasankeyf was among the richest cities in Mesopotamia.

Soon the entire valley is to be flooded with a dam. The controversial project was first conceived in 1954 and abandoned six years ago.

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Prehistoric find located beneath the waves

Archaeologists have discovered traces of Switzerland’s oldest known building, but it will never draw tourists: it lies underwater in the middle of a lake.

Since it was made of wood scientists used dendrochronology – the technique of dating by tree rings – to give a precise figure of 3863 BC.

The find in Lake Biel, northwest of the Swiss capital, Bern, was described as “sensational” by Albert Hafner, who is in charge of underwater archaeology in the region.

Divers working for the cantonal archaeological service came upon the site in the winter of 2006 when they were investigating prehistoric villages built on piles in the once densely populated area of Sutz-Lattrigen.

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Archaeologists open Viking grave to seek secrets of women buried there

OSLO, Norway: Archeologists opened a Viking burial mound on Monday, seeking to learn more about two women — possibly a queen and a princess — laid to rest there 1,173 years ago.

In 1904, the mound in southeastern Norway's Vestfold County surrendered one of the country's greatest archaeological treasures, the Oseberg Viking longboat, which is now on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.

The ship, which measures more than 20 meters, or 65 feet, was buried in 834 in the enormous mound at the Slagen farm as the grave ship for a rich and powerful Viking woman, according to the Viking Ship Museum.

The remains of the two women, one believed to have been in her 60s and the other in her 30s, were first exhumed during the ship excavation. They were reburied in the mound in 1948 — in a modern aluminum casket placed inside a five-ton stone sarcophagus — in hopes that future scientific methods might reveal their secrets.

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Viking remains found intact

Archaeologists carefully extracted the human remains of two Viking women from an ancient burial mound this week, in an effort to keep them from disintegrating. Their fears proved to be unfounded.

The experts from Norway's Museum of Cultural History in Oslo had been unsure of the condition of the two women, believed to be an Oseberg queen and her servant. They're hoping their bones can reveal new information about them through DNA testing.

The bodies had been sealed in an aluminium casket in the late 1940s in an earlier attempt at preservation. The casket was then replaced in the burial mound's sarcophagus.

Workers at the gravesite southwest of Oslo discovered Monday that the casket was damaged at one end and that it was sitting in nine centimeters of water, believed to be formed from condensation inside the sarcophagus.

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Bodies Exhumed From Viking Burial Mound

Archaeologists opened a Viking burial mound on Monday, seeking to learn more about two women _ possibly a queen and a princess _ laid to rest there 1,173 years ago.

In 1904, the mound in southeastern Norway's Vestfold County surrendered one of the country's greatest archaeological treasures, the Oseberg Viking longboat, which is now on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.

The 65-foot vessel was buried in 834 in the enormous mound as the grave ship for a rich and powerful Viking woman, according to the museum.

The remains of the two women, one believed to have been in her 60s and the other in her 30s, were first exhumed during the ship excavation. They were reburied in the mound in 1948 _ in a modern aluminum casket placed inside a five-ton stone sarcophagus _ in hopes that future scientific methods might reveal their secrets.

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Viking queen may be exhumed for clues to killing

OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- The grave of a mysterious Viking queen may hold the key to a 1,200 year-old case of suspected ritual killing, and scientists are planning to unearth her bones to find out.

She is one of two women whose fate has been a riddle ever since their bones were found in 1904 in a 72 feet longboat buried at Oseberg in south Norway, its oaken form preserved miraculously, with even its menacing, curling prow intact.

No one even knows the name of the queen, but the Oseberg boat stirred one of the archeological sensations of the 20th century two decades before the discovery of the tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings.

Scientists now hope to exhume the women, reburied in the mound in 1947 and largely forgotten, reckoning that modern genetic tests could give clues to resolve whether one was the victim of a ritual sacrifice.

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Viking queen exhumed to solve mystery

SLAGEN, Norway (Reuters) - Archaeologists exhumed the body of a Viking queen on Monday, hoping to solve a riddle about whether a woman buried with her 1,200 years ago was a servant killed to be a companion into the afterlife.

As a less gruesome alternative, the two women in the grass-covered Oseberg mound in south Norway might be a royal mother and daughter who died of the same disease and were buried together in 834.

"We will do DNA tests to try to find out. I don't know of any Viking skeletons that have been analyzed as we plan to do," Egil Mikkelsen, director of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History, told Reuters at the graveside.

As rain pelted down, four men lifted an aluminum coffin containing the bones of two women after digging a 1.5 meter (5 ft) deep hole in the mound where the women were originally buried in a spectacular Viking longboat.

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Probe for 1,000-year-old Viking ship

LONDON (AFP) - An archaeologist using radar technology said Monday he has found the outline of what he believes is a 1,000-year-old Viking longship under a pub car park in north-west England.

Professor Stephen Harding used Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to trace the outline of a vessel matching the scale and shape of a longship, perhaps from the time Vikings settled in Meols, on the Wirral peninsula in Merseyside.

Meols has one of Britain's best preserved Viking settlements, buried deep beneath the village and nearby coastal defences.

Harding, from the University of Nottingham in east central England, is now seeking funds to pay for an archaeological dig to search for the vessel which lies beneath two-to-three metres of waterlogged clay.

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Radiocarbon Palaeolithic Database Europe

“At the Berlin INQUA Congress a working group, European Late Pleistocene Isotopic Stages 2 & 3: Humans, Their Ecology & Cultural Adaptations, was established. One of the objectives was building a database of the human occupation of Europe during this period. The database has been enlarged and now includes Lower, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sites connecting them to their environmental conditions and the available chronometric dating.”

You can find the Radiocarbon Palaeolithic Database Europe here, or use the link in the sidebar.

Many thanks to Anastasia Tsaliki who sent me this information.

Anastasia also sent me information about a blog for Mediterranean archaeology.

You can find the Mediterranean Archaeology blog here, or use the link in the sidebar.

'Viking longship' discovered under pub car park

Archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be a Viking longship buried beneath a pub car park in Merseyside.

The vessel - a 1,000-year-old relic from the Norse occupation of the Wirral peninsular - was detected using state-of-the-art ground radar technology.

The site has not yet been excavated, but the dimensions and shape of the boat revealed by the scan match those of the Vikings' iconic transport vessels.

It is thought to lie beneath 6ft to 10ft (2m to 3m) of waterlogged clay under the nearby Railway Inn in Meols.

Parts of a ship were originally uncovered by workmen in the 1930s, when the original pub was knocked down and rebuilt further away from the road and a car park put in its place.

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Viking ship 'buried beneath pub'

A 1,000-year-old Viking longship is thought to have been discovered under a pub car park on Merseyside.

The vessel is believed to lie beneath 6ft to 10ft (2m to 3m) of clay by the Railway Inn in Meols, Wirral, where Vikings are known to have settled.

Experts believe the ship could be one of Britain's most significant archaeological finds.

Professor Stephen Harding, of the University of Nottingham, is now seeking funds to pay for an excavation.

The Viking expert used ground penetrating radar (GPR) equipment to pinpoint the ship's whereabouts.

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Viking longship 'buried under pub car park'

A 1,000-year-old Viking longship may have been discovered buried under a pub car park in Merseyside, archaeologists have said.
Experts used radar technology to map the location of what they believe could be one of Britain's most significant archaeological finds.

The technology has been used to trace the outline of an object which matches the scale and shape of a longship, possibly from the time Vikings settled in Meols, on the Wirral peninsular in Merseyside.

Meols is known to have one of Britain's best preserved Viking settlements, buried deep beneath the village and nearby coastal defences.

The vessel is thought to lie beneath about 10ft of water-logged clay under the nearby Railway Inn.

Viking expert Professor Stephen Harding, of the University of Nottingham, is seeking funds to pay for a major archaeological dig to excavate the site. He believes the ship could be carefully removed and exhibited in a museum.

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1,000-YEAR-OLD VIKING LONGSHIP COULD BE BURIED UNDER PUB CAR PARK

Experts have discovered what they think may be one of Britain’s most important archaeological finds – a Viking longship buried under a pub car park in Merseyside.

The ship was located used a high-tech Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) device, which traced its outline under 2-3 metres of waterlogged clay below the car park of the Railway Inn in Meols, the Wirral.

Professor Stephen Harding of the University of Nottingham, who made the discovery, is now looking for funding to excavate the site, and believes that its shape and outline matches that of a 1,000-year-old Norse transport vessel.

The ship was first uncovered in 1938 by workmen who were knocking down the old Railway Inn to be rebuilt further away from the road. They found parts of a clinker-built ship but covered it up again to finish converting the site into a car park.

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Workmen Hid Viking Longship Under Pub

Builders who uncovered the remains of a Viking ship in a pub cellar did what any self-respecting workmen would do - they hid it, just like their foreman told them.

Instead they told no one, knocked down the Railway Inn in Meols, rebuilt it further from the road and turned the old pub into a car park.

Fifty years on, one of the builders mentioned it to his son who drew a sketch and passed it on to the local university.

Now archaeologists believe their find was a 1,000-year-old Viking longship and could be one of Britain's most significant archaeological finds.

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PREHISTORIC DIG EXPERTS GIVE A HISTORY LESSON

The public were given a rare chance to learn more about the history of one of Moray's prehistoric settlement sites yesterday.

Visitors of all ages took the opportunity for a close-up visit to the archaeological site at Birnie, near Elgin, where two hoards of Roman silver coins were unearthed in recent years.

The open day allowed people to meet experts face-to-face and take part in ancient arts and crafts activities.

The event was organised by National Museums Scotland and comes just weeks after archaeologists discovered an Iron Age pot at the ancient dwelling place.

The find was made in the same trench as the silver coins in 2000 and 2001, backing up the possibility that they could have been part of an ancient ritual.

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Temple of Augustus found in Pompeiopolis

Recent excavations in the ancient city of Pompeiopolis, a Roman city located in Kastamonu's Taşköprü district, uncovered a forum and the temple of Roman Emperor Augustus.

A team including renowned German geophysicist, Jörg Fassbinderm, who calls the discovery quite promising has carried out the excavation work at the site.

While other Temples of Augustus also exist in Ankara and İzmir's Bergama region, the recent temple found in the ancient city of Pompeiopolis is the best preserved, said excavation team leader, Latife Summerer, of Munich University in Germany. He added that no other sample existed in the Black Sea region and that they hoped to find other items such as inscriptions and coins in further excavations at the site.

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Shedding light on ancient Keramos

Excavations at ancient Keramos, an important site of the Karia and Leleg settlements, have recently revealed an acropolis, Roman temple and 5,000-year-old tombs in Muğla's Milas district. The first stage of the project, �Shedding Light on Ancient Keramos: Settlement and Inventory Studies,� has been completed.

Led by Muğla University Milas Sıtkı Koçman Assistant Professor Abuzer Kızıl, the excavation team consists of six archaeologists, two museum officers and 16 workers. The Cultural Presence and Museums General Directorate, Milas Museum Directorate, Muğla University and Ören Municipality support the studies.

Surface research between the Ören region in Gökova and Selimiye in the outskirts of the Beşparmak Mountains covered 2,100 square kilometers. Kızıl said they were encouraging people to protect the cultural heritage of the 5,000-year old region.

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Builder found Vikings washed up at pub

Archaeologists believe they have found the only intact Viking boat in Britain beneath the patio of a Merseyside pub. The 10th-century vessel was discovered in the 1930s by builders excavating the basement of the Railway Inn on the Wirral peninsula, but they covered it up because they feared an archaeological dig would disrupt their work.

The boat would have been forgotten had one of the builders not reported his discovery to his son, who passed the information on to academics at Nottingham University.

Stephen Harding, of the university’s archaeology department, used a ground-penetrating radar to investigate the claim and located a boat-shaped object buried in the soil where it had been found nearly 70 years ago.

Professor Harding said that he was confident from the builder’s description that it was a Viking transport ship and now hopes to prove it by raising up to £2 million for an excavation. If his theory is correct it will be the only Viking ship in Britain with a surviving wooden hull.

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Archaeologists find remains of sky-disc people in Germany

Goseck, Germany (dpa) ­ Archaeologists digging at the place where an amazing Bronze Age disc was found in Germany have turned up a body and remains of a Stone Age building, adding to the riddle around one of the world's biggest archaeological sensations of the past decade.

Andreas Northe, giving the results of this summer's dig on the remote hill in eastern Germany, said, "We found a child's grave, a cache of stone tools and some remains from a long-house."

The dig was done at a spot in a line of sight from the place where amateurs using metal detectors in 1999 found the Nebra celestial disc, a 3,600-year-old depiction of the sun, moon and stars which is believed to be the oldest extant calculator of the seasons.

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Dig in and find out about Dartmoor?s past

THE diverse architectural and cultural Dartmoor heritage can be witnessed by the public next month through ?Heritage Open Days?. Open days is now a well established annual event co-ordinated by the Civic Trust and English Heritage. Thousands of events take place across the country and it gives participants a chance to visit sites and buildings which are not usually open to the public or charge admission. Dartmoor National Park Authority has again arranged a number of special events to help bring aspects of Dartmoor?s cultural heritage to a wider audience. During 2007, the authority?s particular focus is being placed upon the issues of climate change and its impact on Dartmoor. This theme will also be the focus of the authority?s Heritage Open Days. Between September 6 and 9 participants can learn about climate change and its impact on Dartmoor?s population and landscape in the past, both pre-history and medieval times. Visits include Merrivale and Hound Tor which have experienced the impacts of climate change over periods of time.

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Bronze Age excavations in Cyprus open new chapter

Archaeological investigations in the past summer featured renewed excavations at the Bronze Age community of Politiko-Troullia, about 25 km southwest of Nicosia in the copper-bearing foothills of the Troodos Mountains, and brought to light a series of households that produced evidence of intensive animal husbandry and crop processing, copper or bronze metallurgy and sophisticated ceramic technology.

According to the excavations, this took place during the Middle Bronze Age, just prior to the advent of cities on Late Bronze Age Cyprus.

The results from Politiko-Troullia open a new archaeological chapter on the communities that provided the foundation for urbanized civilization on Cyprus.

Under the direction of Dr. Steven Falconer and Dr. Patricia Fall of Arizona State University, this fieldwork revealed extensive evidence of the Bronze Age community (ca. 2000 B.C.) that was the predecessor of ancient Tamassos, the seat of a centrally important kingdom during the subsequent Iron Age.

The excavations involved graduate and undergraduate students from Cyprus, Canada, Australia and the United States.

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Cave Clue Reveals Ancient Bohemian Life

Aug. 23, 2007 — A prehistoric Spanish hunting group that may have even had its own gang symbols appears to have drawn, hunted, crashed in a cave, eaten, recycled waste and moved on, suggests a new study.

Like a good detective story, the research hinged on one major clue — a buried pile of mysterious black bones found in a dark, dank room at the interior of El Mirón Cave near the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.

This cave was like a residential hotel for traveling groups of Stone Age hunters, according to lead author Ana Belén Marín Arroyo, who worked with Lawrence Straus and other scientists.

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Oldest gorilla ages our joint ancestor

The last common ancestor of humans and gorillas might have lived at least 2 million years earlier than previously thought. Fossilized teeth of the earliest gorilla ever discovered, dating to 10 million years ago, have been found in Africa, say researchers.

The new species (Chororapithecus abyssinicus) from Ethiopia, reported on 'A new species of great ape from the late Miocene epoch in Ethiopia' of this issue, helps to fill in a huge gap in the fossil record. The team of Ethiopian and Japanese researchers has based its conclusion on just nine teeth from at least three individuals of the species, which were discovered in the desert scrubland of Afar about 170 kilometres east of Addis Ababa.

The teeth, eight molars and a canine, "are collectively indistinguishable from modern gorilla subspecies" in size, proportion and scan-revealed internal structure, says Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo Museum, Japan, who led the study. The team argues that the gorilla's divergence date from the human lineage is not about 8 million years ago as previously surmised (S. Kumar et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA102, 18842–18847; 2005), but "greater than 10 to 11 million years ago" on the basis of the age of the new species. Functionally, he adds, the teeth already seem to be evolving — they could shear through a plant diet, a gorilla trait — although other herbivore apes also exist in the fossil record.

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A dialogue with the dead

Kilmartin Glen in Scotland is one of Europe's most important archeological sites. Stuart Jeffries meets the man who is bringing its ghosts back from the grave

'This," says Angus Farquhar, sweeping his arm imperiously across a vista of Kilmartin Glen in Argyll, "is really a theatre of death. As an artist, how could I be anything but drawn to it?"

We're standing in the ruins of Dunadd Fort on a hill called the Moire Mhor, or the Great Moss. Before us stretch 150 square miles of breathtaking Scottish landscape. Boasting more than 350 ancient monuments within a six-mile radius, S-shaped Kilmartin Glen is one of Europe's most important pre-historic sites. It is an area of extraordinary archaeological importance teeming with burial complexes, henges and ancient rocks marked by human hands thousands upon thousands of years ago. This fascinating landscape is also Farquhar's blank canvas - the raw material of his latest environmental artwork.

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Digging up history at the Playhouse

ARCHAEOLOGY experts will meet the owner of Beverley's former Picture Playhouse next week to discuss excavations which could shed new light on 800 years of the town's history.

Businessman David Fletcher, who owns the former cinema, is planning to excavate a basement under the historic building, which he has planning permission to convert for retail use.

But before the redevelopment work gets underway an archaeological evaluation will be carried out, which experts hope will provide a valuable insight into Beverley's past, perhaps dating back as far as the 11th or 12th centuries.

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