Thursday, December 02, 2004
Graves of Saxon warriors found
AN ANCIENT graveyard discovered on a hill overlooking Marlborough on Sunday looks set to confirm the long-held belief that the town had Saxon origins.
The five graves containing the remains of what are believed to be Saxon warriors complete with shields was made by metal detector enthusiasts.
Realising the enormity of their discovery, the enthusiasts halted their exploration and notified police that they had found a burial site.
This is Wiltshire
Historic castle needs £2.5m of work
A HISTORIC Highland castle that has been closed to the public because of safety concerns needs £2.5 million of work to save it from further decline.
Historic Scotland commissioned reports on the condition and historical significance of Castle Tioram in Moidart, which has been at the centre of a dispute for seven years.
Its owner, Lex Brown, a millionaire Scottish businessman, wants to restore it and live there, but Historic Scotland favours the building being conserved as a ruin.
The Scotsman
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Crusaders exhibition to travel to four countries
The Superintendence of Cultural Heritage is co-organising an international exhibition entitled Crusades: Myths and Realities, which will be shown in four countries.
The exhibition will be opening at the Municipal Arts Centre of Nicosia in Cyprus tomorrow. It will travel to Athens, Amalfi in Italy and then, in September next year, on to Malta, once the stronghold of the last of the Crusaders.
The exhibition is due to a successful bid for EU funding made by a consortium comprising the Perides Foundation (Cyprus), the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage (Malta), the NCR (Italy) and the University of Amien (France). The project has received the highest amount of funding that is possible within the Culture 2000 framework.
Times of Malta
stonehenge heritagehikes
A carpenter's new theory on how Stonehenge came about could roll away old theories on Britain's megalithic monument, finds Patrick Weir. For more than 20 years, Derbyshire carpenter Gordon Pipes has been striving to find an answer to a 4,000-year-old question that still confounds archaeologists; namely how, without roads or wheels, did Neolithic man transport 80 sarsen stones, each weighing an average of 30 tons, 20 miles from the Marlborough Downs to Salisbury Plain to construct Stonehenge?
Megalithic Portal
27 archaeological sites unearthed in past year
No fewer than 27 new archaeological sites, 13 of them in Rabat, were unearthed over the past year, following close scrutiny by the Malta Environment and Planning Authority.
During the year Mepa received 350 applications for proposed development within archaeologically sensitive areas.
In nearly a third of these applications, the development required an Archaeological Watching Brief, by which Mepa archaeologists and the Superintendence of Cultural Heritage monitor the works to ensure no damage is done
Times of Malta
Bronze age boat to be recreated
Archaeologists are planning to build a copy of an ancient boat found in Dover and sail it from Britain to France.
The £200,000 project is intended to demonstrate how the boat might have been used thousands of years ago.
The boat is one of the best preserved examples of a coastal vessel from the bronze age and was found in a chance discovery in 1992.
BBC News
BILL WYMAN KICKS OFF PORTABLE ANTIQUITIES ROADSHOW IN COLCHESTER
He might be better known for wielding a bass guitar than a metal detector, but former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman has been an enthusiastic amateur archaeologist for many years.
So who better to open proceedings at a Portable Antiquities Scheme Roadshow? Held up and down the country on November 27, the events offered a chance for members of the public to have any finds they’d unearthed identified by an expert.
Altogether some 840 people did just that at events in Donnington, Exeter, Reading, Shrewsbury, Wrexham, York and Colchester where Bill Wyman was on hand to get things going.
24 Hour Museum News
France trumpets discovery of Gallic war trophies
French archaeologists said this week they had discovered an exceptional Gallic war treasure in the south of the country, including rare war trumpets and ornate helmets.
The some 470 objects, or fragments of objects, were found at the end of September during a dig at Naves, in the department of Correze in southern France, in a ditch hollowed out of a Gallic-Roman temple, they said.
"The exceptional character of this discovery lies mainly in the presence of five almost complete carnyx," Christophe Maniquet, an archaeologist at Inrap, France's national institute for Archaeological studies, said.
Expatica
Welcome to the Little Chef of the ancient world
Their dried-out food, cheerless service and overpriced petrol have made motorway service stations the bane of modern travel.
However, archaeologists have found evidence that they are not such a modern phenomenon after uncovering the remains of the Roman equivalent of Newport Pagnell services.
Deep beneath a bus terminus in the town of Neuss, near Dusseldorf, they have found the 2,000-year-old foundations of a roadside rest-stop complete with forecourt, chariot workshop, restaurant and an area to give horses water and hay.
Telegraph
New Web Site for London Archaeology
An excellent new web site for London Archaeology can be found at http://www.londonarchaeology.org.uk/Main_Page.
A link to this side has been added to the Archaeology in Europe Weblog sidebar.
Early 7th century battlefield site found
For the last three summers the Chester Archaeological Society has been excavating at the multi-period site known as Heronbridge which lies 2km south of Chester city centre. In addition to a Roman roadside settlement the site also features a post-Roman mass burial, partly excavated in the 1930s and interpreted as a battle cemetery of uncertain date, along with a curvilinear earthwork fortification enclosing an area of 6ha, also undated. The mass burial was re-located this summer and more than a dozen skeletons partly exposed in a small area. This revealed the dead were laid close together, on their back or side, and in slightly overlapping rows. Two skeletons were removed for analysis. This was carried out by York Osteoarchaeology Ltd and confirmed they were battle casualties, both having a number of sword blade cuts to the head as well as other injuries. Radiocarbon dating of bone samples by the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre indicate they date to the late 6th or early 7th century. It therefore seems very likely that the burial relates to the Battle of Chester fought c. AD 616 when the Anglian army of Aethelfrith of Northumbria defeated the combined forces of the British kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys. Radiocarbon dating of samples from the fill of the ditch belonging to the neighbouring earthwork indicates that this, too, is 7th century in origin and is thus a rare early Anglo-Saxon fortification. It was perhaps constructed by the Northumbrians following their victory.
Information from Dr David Mason - Project Director
Intensive fishing was an ancient practice
Intensive fishing by humans may be more ancient than previously thought, suggests a new archaeological study, which shows that significant marine fishing may have started in the UK in the 9th century.
The diminishing levels of marine fish stocks as a result of over-fishing has caused great concern since the mid-20th century. The rapid increase in commercial fishing after World War II has had a devastating impact on the marine ecosystem in the North Sea, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and caused a number of marine fish species to become endangered.
New Scientist
The Vikings: A Memorable Visit to America
Exploring the New World a thousand years ago, a Viking woman gave birth to what is likely the first European-American baby. The discovery of the house the family built upon their return to Iceland has scholars rethinking the Norse sagas
Roughly 1,000 years ago, the story goes, a Viking trader and adventurer named Thorfinn Karlsefni set off from the west coast of Greenland with three ships and a band of Norse to explore a new land that promised fabulous riches. Following the route that had been pioneered some seven years before by Leif Eriksson, Thorfinn sailed up Greenland's coast, traversed the Davis Strait and turned south past Baffin Island to Newfoundland—and perhaps beyond. Snorri, the son of Thorfinn and his wife, Gudrid, is thought to be the first European baby born in North America.
Smithsonian Magazine
The never-ending search
Fascination with the Holy Grail has lasted for centuries, and now the Bletchley Park code-breakers have joined the hunt. But what is it that's made the grail the definition of something humans are always searching for but never actually finding?
Could an obscure inscription on a 250-year-old monument in a Staffordshire garden point the way to the Holy Grail - the jewelled chalice reportedly used by Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper?
BBC News
Malta participants in ANSER project
Over the past two and a half years the University of Malta, through the Foundation of International Studies, participated in the EU project Anciennes Routes Maritimes Méditerranéennes (ANSER), financed under the Interreg IIIB Medocc programme. Participating countries included Italy, France, Spain, Algeria, Morocco and Portugal.
From within these countries a number of institutions, including the Provincial Archaeological Museum of Alicante, the Underwater Archaeology Centre of Catalonia, the National Centre of Maritime and Underwater Archaeology of Portugal and the Camille Jullian Centre of Aix-en-Provence, all contributed to the success of this project. Dr Nicholas Vella and Timmy Gambin served on the scientific and pilot committees alongside other members from the various participating institutions.
Times of Malta
Prehistoric Julia Roberts Found
Bulgarian archaeologists have found what they claim is Europe's oldest skeleton, which they have named "Julia Roberts" because the woman was a "rare beauty" with a nearly flawless set of teeth.
The archaeologists reported their findings in the Sofia News Agency and Bulgaria's Standart News newspaper.
ABC Science News
Monday, November 29, 2004
Bulldozing an ancient site: Turkish Cypriot developers say they’re willing to bring in the archaeologists
THE row over whether a Turkish Cypriot construction company should be allowed to build on the site of a Bronze-Age necropolis in the village of Kazafani outside Kyrenia resurfaced yesterday with the company at the centre of the debate calling on the north’s authorities to join them in excavating the site.
The offer coincided with a renewed debate over the site’s status within the Turkish Cypriot administration. In line with local law, the antiquities department has reissued its application for the site to be recognised as a grade one archaeological site. The application is currently waiting for ratification by the ‘economy and tourism ministry’, after which its status will be published in the official gazette.
The argument first erupted in June, when the north’s antiquities department called a halt to development of a 40-donum site, known as Vounos, into a complex of luxury housing for sale to predominantly British clients. The department had, unbeknownst to the company, declared Vounos a grade one archaeological site on May 27 this year, but not soon enough to prevent extensive bulldozing of the Bronze Age relic.
Cyprus Mail
Gallic war treasure discovered in southern France
French archaeologists said this week they had discovered an exceptional Gallic war treasure in the south of the country, including rare war trumpets and ornate helmets.
The some 470 objects, or fragments of objects, were found at the end of September during a dig at Naves, in the department of Correze in southern France, in a ditch hollowed out of a Gallic-Roman temple, they said.
"The exceptional character of this discovery lies mainly in the presence of five almost complete carnyx," Christophe Maniquet, an archeologist at Inrap, France's national institute for Archeological studies, said.
Yahoo News
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Découverte d'un trèsor de guerre gaulois
Des archéologues viennent de révéler la découverte faite fin septembre lors de fouilles archéologiques en Corrèze, d'un véritable "trésor de guerre" gaulois, composé de pièces uniques comme des trompettes utilisées au cours de batailles et des casques richement ornés.
Ces 470 objets ou fragments d'objets reposaient dans une fosse, creusée dans l'enceinte d'un temple gallo-romain à Naves (Corrèze), près de Tulle. Les fouilles de ce temple, dont les premières occupations datent du 1er siècle av JC, ont débuté en septembre 2001.
La Libre
3000 Jahre Würzburg Kelten und Franken am Main
24. 11. 2004 – 17. 4. 2005
Sonderausstellung des
Mainfränkischen Museums Würzburg
Freilich ist sie älter, die Stadt, deren Name erstmals in einer Urkunde aus dem Jahr 704 erscheint. Die in diesem Datum verankerte 1300-Jahr Feier der Stadt Würzburg inspiriert das Mainfränkische Museum zu einer Ausstellung, die zeigen möchte, wie Forschung und Funde der Archäologen in Würzburg und Unterfranken Fenster öffnen in das Zeitalter vor 704, eine uns immer noch weitgehend unbekannte, fremd erscheinende Welt, aus der es keine schriftliche Überlieferung gibt.
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