Digger blunder at site of Roman fort

It was built to repel invaders from Roman Britain and for centuries withstood the vagaries of time.

But some of the buried artefacts at Caister, near Yarmouth, have met their match after archaeologists mistakenly used a mechanical digger to uncover the fort's secrets. Norfolk Archaeology Unit (NAU) was commissioned to carry out a dig last year ahead of plans to build houses on a garden bordering the north-east corner of the fort at Uplands Avenue.

A nationally important site, the fort was one of 12 built by the Romans stetching to the south coast, with the others in Norfolk being at Burgh Castle and Brancaster.

The area in question was covered by a thin layer of tarmac, yet beneath that it was straight down into undisturbed Roman deposits allowing a fresh picture to be built up of an area stretching from the fort's outer defences.

Read the rest of this article...

Get your hands off our pagan statue

People in Fermanagh rally to protect Celtic image after reports that it might be moved to a museum

People living near a pagan statue that draws thousands of tourists every year to Northern Ireland's lakelands are threatening a campaign of civil disobedience amid concerns it could be moved to Belfast.

The Janus, which has stood in the Caldragh graveyard on Boa Island in Co Fermanagh since it was put up by the Celts more than 2,000 years ago, inspired the Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney to write the poem, 'January God'. Locals hold the 2ft tall figure, depicting a man on one side and a female on the other, in awe.

Read the rest of this article...

Written in Bone

How radioactive isotopes reveal the migrations of ancient people

In the late thirteenth century, drought ravaged the American Southwest, withering the corn, squash, and beans upon which ancient inhabitants relied for survival. Across the region people abandoned their homes in a desperate search for arable land. Some were lucky enough to find a moist Arizona valley where they built a settlement now known as Grasshopper Pueblo.

At its peak, the pueblo consisted of 500 rooms housing hundreds of families. Archaeologists were puzzled by the differing architecture, pottery styles, and burial traditions within the pueblo, leading them to speculate that the drought must have been so severe that people from several different cultures were forced to live together in one of the few places where food would still grow. While the pottery strongly hinted at the disparate origins of the population, there was no way to test that idea.

Read the rest of this article...

Roman camp's occupiers may have built the Antonine Wall

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have found a camp thought to have been built to accommodate Roman construction workers who constructed the Antonine Wall.

It was discovered in a dig following the demolition of the former OKI factory at Tollpark, near Castlecary, North Lanarkshire.

Ross White of CFA Archaeology said the rectangular camp's outline was first identified in cropmarks on aerial photographs taken in the late 1940s, before the development of the area.

The camp was situated about 400 metres south of the Antonine Wall and midway between the Roman forts at Westerwood and Castlecary.

Read the rest of this article...

Archeologists Discover Medieval Jewish Bath in Erfurt

Archeologists have unearthed a rare find in the eastern German city of Erfurt: a medieval Jewish ritual bath.

Remains of the Jewish ritual bath, called a mikwa, were found near Erfurt's Krämerbrücke (Krämer Bridge). The two-story high construction had been located in the cellar of a building along the bank of the Gera River. The bath was especially well preserved, according to Sven Ostritz of the Thuringian state authority for historical protection and archeology.

The Erfurt mikwa's existence had been documented in the year 1250, but in a systematic search for it several years ago archeologists had failed to locate it, Ostritz said.

Read the rest of this article...

ANCIENT ROMAN AQUEDUCT UNEARTHED

Ancient 2,000-year-old sections of a Roman aqueduct have been unearthed in Lincoln.

Pieces of the underground aqueduct, thought to have been up to 10 miles long, were discovered, giving archaeologists more vital clues on the city's past.

The four sections, each measuring around three feet long, were dug out of the ground in Nettleham Road ahead of a house building development.

And historians made another startling discovery on the site - a road previously thought to be Roman but which actually turned out to be post-Medieval.

Read the rest of this article...

Christie's Auctions Prehistoric Objects

For sale: a 15,000-year-old Siberian mammoth skeleton.

On Monday, Christie's auction house in Paris, which usually sells fine art and furniture, is hosting an unusual auction of paleontological curiosities, including several prehistoric mammals.

Skeletons of a 10,000-year-old, 13.5-foot-long rhinoceros and a 7.5-foot-high cave bear are also going under the hammer. The skeletons are currently owned by a private collector, but buyers may include museums or artists, said Christie's spokeswoman Capucine Milliot.

Read the rest of this article...

What the Heck is Cultural Resource Management?

A term often bandied about by archaeologists and others in the commercial end of the field of archaeology is 'cultural resource management' (often abbreviated CRM).
Save Pasargadae and Persepolis.

You'll hear CRM commonly mentioned in passing during highway road plan construction and urban renewal projects. Often the term is misused, to mean something along the lines of "archaeological research in advance of highway projects" but CRM is actually a process, the process of making decisions about the whole range of existing cultural resources in the face of demands of modern development.

Read the rest of this article...

Cavemen Chose Caves on Five Criteria

House buyers today usually peruse properties with a checklist of desired features in mind. This aspect of human behavior has apparently not changed much over the millennia, according to a new study that found prehistoric cave dwellers in Britain did exactly the same thing when choosing their homes.

The recently released three-year-long survey of approximately 230 caves in the Yorkshire Dales and 190 caves in the northern England Peak District determined that people there from 4,000 to 2,000 B.C. selected caves based on at least five criteria.

Read the rest of this article...

Architect claims to solve pyramid secret

PARIS - A French architect claimed Friday to have uncovered the mystery about how Egypt's Great Pyramid of Khufu was built — with use of a spiral ramp to hoist huge stone blocks into place.

The construction of the Great Pyramid 4,500 years ago by Khufu, a ruler also known as Cheops, has long befuddled scientists as to how its 3 million stone blocks weighing 2.5 tons each were lifted into place.

Ending eight years of study on the subject, architect Jean-Pierre Houdin released his findings and a computerized 3-D mockup showing how workers would have erected the pyramid at Giza outside Cairo.

The most widespread theory had been that an outer ramp had been used by the Egyptians, who left few traces to help archeologists and other scientists decode the secret to the construction.

Read the rest of this article...

Ancient remains set for analysis

Analysis is to begin on a number of ancient human remains discovered by developers in Preston city centre.

The bones - unearthed at Marsh Lane, near its junction with Ladywell Street - are believed to be from a medieval burial ground.

A total of 30 graves were uncovered in February, with around 12 containing virtually complete skeletal remains.

Experts from Oxford Archaeology North are to carry out tests to establish a precise age for the bones.

Read the rest of this article...

Stonehenge - secrets of the builders being revealed.

It is a paradox that the further we move in time away from a pre-historical event (that is before the appearance of contemporary written records) that the more we learn about the facts of that pre-historical event says our BNP culture correspondent.

Victorian scholars believed that the great stone circle on Salisbury Plain was once a druidic temple. Researchers in the mid to late 20th century proven beyond doubt that Stonehenge was built 2000 years before the first druid stepped foot in Wiltshire. Today's researchers are uncovering much more than the previous generation of archeologists.

Now a new find just yards from the Stonehenge site reveals the complex and highly organized society that our own ancestors had created - a degree of complexity ill at odds with the myth of lux orientalis the myth perpetrated throughout the past 300 years that all civilisations and all civilizing influences arose from the East.

Read the rest of this article...

An Taisce M3 Move Warmly Welcomed

The Campaign to Save Tara today warmly welcomed the High Court action
taken by An Taisce against the Minister for Transport and the National
Roads Authority. The Campaign claims that much needed improvements and
upgrades to National routes, as well as the promised by-passes, are
stalled by the M3 proposal because of the contractual restrictions
placed on Meath County Council by the PPP funding mechanism.

The Campaign expressed dismay that Justice Kelly, who heard the
application today, cited the danger of jeopardizing commercial
negotiations between the NRA and private consortiums, as a reason for
refusing to grant permission for An Taisce's challenge.

In a statement Michael Canney from the Campaign to Save Tara said; ‘We
would have hoped that the historical and cultural importance of the Tara
complex and the urgency in preventing any further destruction, would
take precedence over any commercial concerns.’

Read the rest of this press release...

Oldest Perfumes Found on "Aphrodite's Island"

The world's oldest known perfumes have been found on the island reputed to be the birthplace of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, lust, and beauty, Italian archaeologists announced last week.

Discovered on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus in 2003, the perfumes date back more than 4,000 years, said excavation leader Maria Rosaria Belgiorno of the National Research Council in Rome.

Remnants of the perfumes were found inside an ancient 3,230-square-foot (300-square-meter) factory that was part of a larger industrial complex at Pyrgos.


Read the rest of this article...

Opportunity to get 'hands on history' during walk

BEDFORD Purlieus National Nature Reserve will be hosting a special April Fools' Day walk.
A key to this woodland’s historical importance is that it has been covered by trees since the last Ice Age, and thus remained undisturbed.

Recent archaeological surveys have revealed some fascinating findings – Peterborough City Council historic environment officer Ben Robinson has described what has been found as of immense importance, possibly re-writing history, and may even ultimately show why the settlement called Peterborough is where it is today.

Forest district manager, Kevin Stannard, said: “This is a rare opportunity for people to get their hands on history. We’ve found roman wall tiles in the vicinity of the remains of a very large group of buildings.

Read the rest of this article...

Ancient history to disappear at A-level despite its popularity

Ancient history is to become a thing of the past, with the only exam board offering it as an A-level subject now planning to ditch the course.

The decision by the Oxford and Cambridge and Royal Society of Arts (OCR) exam board has led to concerns that pupils will no longer understand the legacies of ancient civilisations.

The subject has introduced students to topics such as the birth of Athenian democracy, the growth of the Roman Empire, the beginnings of Christianity, the revolt by Spartacus against slavery and the battle of Thermopylae, where the stand by an small Greek force against the Persians in 480 BCE became the byword for heroic struggles.

Last night experts were saying that all these were examples of history that would be lost on future generations.

Read the rest of this article...

Historic pottery found in river

Changes in water erosion while work takes place on a new bridge over a north Devon river has led to the discovery of centuries-old pottery.

Archaeological enthusiast Mike Palmer was among the first to find it on the River Taw in Barnstaple, where the tidal river has scoured the sand bank.

Pottery has been produced in Barnstaple since the medieval period.

Now the finds, some from as early as the 13th Century, will be displayed at the Barnstaple and North Devon Museum.

Read the rest of this article...

Glass containers from ancient perfume lab found in Cyprus

Whilst digging at the Pyrgos-Mavroraki site some 90 kilometres southwest of Nicosia Cyprus, a team of archaeologists unearthed a complex believed to have been used as a perfume laboratory. An exhibit in Rome now features fragrances from the world's oldest known perfume factory. Four perfumes in the Capitoline Museums, recreated by a team of archaeologists from 14 original fragrances dating from 4,000 years ago, are on display, said an Associated Press report. According to the agency, the archaeologists used fragrances extracted from traces left in containers at the site in order to recreate ancient aromas with the same techniques used in the past, said Maria Rosaria Belgiorno, the leading archaeologist who discovered the factory in 2003.

Read the rest of this article...

Prehistoric women: Not so simple, not so strange

Jim Adovasio is the leading expert in the perishable artefacts of the Palaeolithic – baskets, cordage, woven fabric – all associated, if somewhat arbitrarily, with women. To correct the astigmatism that has hitherto seen prehistory as the story of early man, Adovasio – director of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute in Erie, Pennsylvania – has joined with Olga Soffer, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and journalist Jake Page to produce The Invisible Sex.

The roles of women even in our own time are not easy to define; yet our intrepid threesome has encapsulated more than 3 million years of human femaleness in fewer than 300 pages, rather too many of which are taken up with moaning about the sex bias of anthropologists of yore.

Read the rest of this article...

Heldengrab im Niemandsland

Von 30. März bis 28. Mai 2007 führt die internationale Sonderausstellung "Heldengrab im Niemandsland - Ein frühungarischer Reiter aus Niederösterreich" des Museum für Urgeschichte Apsarn (Österreich) in die Zeit der ungarischen Beutezüge nach Westeuropa im 10. Jahrhundert nach Christus, als die Einfälle ungarischer Reiterscharen das christliche Abendland in Angst und Schrecken versetzten.

Read the rest of this article...