Roman settlement uncovered in UK

An American archaeologist has uncovered the foundations for a Roman settlement on east Cleveland coast in the United Kingdom.

According to a report in The Northern Echo, archaeologist Steve Sherlock has found a 1,600 year-old site for creating jet jewellery, with the help of volunteers from the Teesside Archaeological Society.

Sherlock's latest discovery comes a year after he uncovered evidence of Anglo-Saxon royalty in a farmer's fields near Loftus.

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Tree rings may hold key to burial site

Tree rings could help solve the mystery behind centuries-old remains dug up in Preston.

Bones of up to 30 people and parts of coffins were unearthed by builders working on a new hotel in Marsh Lane, Preston, last year.

Archaeologists who carried out a dig on the site are submitting an application to English Heritage this month to secure funding for more analysis.

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Dig uncovers possibility of tannery

A MASS of animal bones found on the Kinecroft in Wallingford could indicate that the town had a hitherto unknown tannery on the site.

The dig by the universities of Oxford, Exeter and Leicester found the bones of cattle and other farm animals - and the experts said there could have been a tannery on what would have been the edge of the town, kept away from the centre because tanning is a smelly business.

The excavators worked on sites on Kinecroft, Bullcroft and Castle Meadows as part of an ongoing Burh to Borough mapping of the town's development from Norman through Saxon and medieval times.

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Archaeological digs at Smarden

SMARDEN'S hidden history is about to be unearthed. More than 20 teams of amateur archaeologists will be descending on the village this weekend hoping to uncover some historical secrets in what is being called The Big Smarden Dig. Organiser Alex Ferris said: "This all began about three years ago when English Heritage came to Smarden and took village children out for some fieldwork. They picked up about 400 historical artefacts in a ploughed field."

This led to curious English Heritage experts to examine a map of the village to try and ascertain what it may have once looked like. Mr Ferris continued: "There has long been this unproven theory the Romans were here. In the parish, people are starting to find iron workings which are Roman. That rewrites the history books in a way because old history books tell you that nobody lived here then."

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Hengoed medieval hall to be open to the public

AN OLD farmhouse which is believed to contain the oldest timber recorded in any building in the British Isles is to be open to the public.

Hengoed, an early 15th century cruck hall house has been dated as having been constructed between 1438 and 1447 but was only "discovered" in 2005. The wood used in the construction, however, was about 500 years old at that time.

For over 100 years the old hall on the outskirts of Ruthin had been used an agricultural building, the main residence having been moved across the farmyard to the site of the present farmhouse. That is one of the reasons why it is so well preserved.

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Roman Empire 'raised HIV threat'

The spread of the Roman Empire through Europe could help explain why those living in its former colonies are more vulnerable to HIV.

The claim, by French researchers, is that people once ruled by Rome are less likely to have a gene variant which protects against HIV.

This includes England, France, Greece and Spain, New Scientist reports.

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Vladimir Monomakh Seal Discovered in Novgorod

A lead seal has been recently found during archeological excavation in Veliki Novgorod. It belonged to legendary Prince Vladimir Monomakh, scientists presume.

The seal bears a depiction of St. Basil of Caesarea on one side and a benevolent Greek language description on the reverse side, Head of Archeological Research Centre Sergei Troyanovsky informs.

“Of all Russian princes who had the Christian name of Basil, historians know Vladimir the Baptizer and his grandson Vladimir Monomakh. After some demure the specialists chose the latter one, because similar Monomakh’s seals had been found in Novgorod, Staraya Ladoga and Ukraine before” – the archeologist said.

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Melting Swiss glacier yields Neolithic trove, climate secrets

Some 5,000 years ago, on a day with weather much like today's, a prehistoric person tread high up in what is now the Swiss Alps, wearing goat leather pants, leather shoes and armed with a bow and arrows.

The unremarkable journey through the Schnidejoch pass, a lofty trail 2,756 metres (9,000 feet) above sea level, has been a boon to scientists. But it would never have emerged if climate change were not melting the nearby glacier.

So far, 300 objects dating as far back as the Neolithic or New Stone Age -- about 4,000 BC in Europe -- to the later Bronze and Iron Ages and the Medieval era have been found in the site's former icefields.

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Archaeologists find unique 7000-year-old statue

Masovice, South Moravia, Sept 4 (CTK) - Czech archaeologists have uncovered a torso of a unique female statue created about 7000 years ago near Masovice, which is the second similar find in this locality, Zdenek Cizmar, head of the archaeological research, told CTK Thursday.

The woman's statue found in the area last summer was given the name "Hedvika of Masovice," while "her sister" is called "Johanka," according to the female names in the calendar on the days when the artifacts were found, Cizmar added.

"Though the statues come from the same period, each of them is different and exceptional," Cizmar said.

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Roman settlement unearthed in field

AN archaeologist has uncovered the foundations for a Roman settlement on the picturesque east Cleveland coast.

Steve Sherlock, whose painstaking work in a farmer's fields near Loftus uncovered evidence of Anglo-Saxon royalty last year, has returned to the site - and been able to go even further back in time in the latest dig.

Mr Sherlock, who has been helped by volunteers from Teesside Archaeological Society, was thrilled and surprised by the look-out station, discovered just inches below the surface.

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Archaeological dig confirms Roman presence in Moray

Ball pin head, a dagger and pieces of harness among artefacts found

ARCHAEOLOGISTS and volunteers at the Birnie dig site, near Elgin, have uncovered more evidence of the Romans’ presence in Moray.

The team, led by Fraser Hunter, curator at the National Museums of Scotland, is excavating two 2,000-year-old roundhouses.

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Grid computer recreates ancient Greek lute

Researchers have harnessed the awesome power of grid computing to answer one of the great mysteries facing mankind: what exactly does an epigonion sound like?

At the risk of stating the obvious, an epigonion is a stringed instrument plucked by the ancient Greeks, and there aren't many around these days. To recreate the sound, a model of the instrument was built up from pictures and archaeological evidence, and this data was fed into ASTRA - Ancient instruments Sound/Timbre Reconstruction Application - which creates the sound.

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Symbolic past of early Aegeans revealed at Dhaskalio Kavos site

A rocky islet and a nearby hillside have yielded evidence of one of Greece’s oldest and most enigmatic ritual sites. Imported stones and fragmented marble statuettes show that Dhaskalio and Kavos were “a symbolic central place for the Early Bronze Age” in the Aegean, according to Professor Colin Renfrew.

Kavos is a stony, scrub-covered slope on the Cycladic island of Keros. Forty-five years ago Professor Renfrew, then a PhD student at Cambridge, found extensive looting there, with fragments of marble bowls and the famous Cycladic folded-arm figurines scattered across the surface.

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Stonehenge 'was hidden from lower classes'

Archeologists have uncovered the remains of what they believe to be a 20ft fence designed to screen Stonehenge from the view of unworthy Stone Age Britons.

The wooden construction extended nearly two miles across Salisbury Plain more than 5,000 years ago, and would have served to shield the sacred site from the prying eyes of ordinary lower-class locals.

Trenches have been dug around the monument, tracing the course of the fence which meanders around the stone circle.

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Putting a face to the past

What do Johann Sebastian Bach, Saint Nicholas, and the firstborn son of Pharaoh Rameses II all have in common?

The answer? All their faces have been reconstructed using cutting-edge computer technology.

Dr Caroline Wilkinson is a forensic anthropologist, recreating faces from human remains for archaeological and police investigations - bringing the past to life.

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Archaeologists fear for the past as weather alters

ARCHAEOLOGISTS are warning climate change not only poses a threat to future generations but could also damage the past by destroying remains dating back to the Bronze Age.

A conference at Bradford University has been discussing the damage global warming has done to sites of archaeological interest across the north Atlantic.

Rising sea level, coastal erosion, changing weather patterns and melting ice sheets has meant evidence of Viking settlements is being lost.

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Archeological dig unearths old woman in Poland

The remains of a 30-year-old woman were found today at an archeological excavation in Pinczow, in the Swietokrzyska region, southern Poland.

The body, identified as female, dates back 6,500 years.

The director of the dig, Przemyslaw Duleba, from the Institute of Archeology at the University of Warsaw, stated that this is the oldest discovery every to be found in this region. "The skeleton of the young woman is perfectly preserved and laid on her left side in an
embryonic position."

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Underwater forest surveyed

Divers are surveying a submerged forest in central Scotland that could be more than 6,000 years old.

Divers are surveying a submerged forest in central Scotland that could be more than 6,000 years old. The Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology has been examining the 50 trees in Loch Tay, Perthshire, and trying to find any evidence of human life near the trees, which date back to 4270 BC.

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Roman fort is found in the Lake District

A Roman camp, said to be of national significance, has been discovered on the outskirts of Keswick.

The discovery, near the famous Castlerigg Stone Circle, is thought to date back to the first century and has solved a mystery spanning hundreds of years.

Historians always predicted there was a Roman presence in the Keswick area and now the underground remains of an ancient structure the size of eight football pitches has been found.

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The Viking and Anglo-Saxon Landscape and Economy (VASLE) Project

In the last fifteen years the role of metal-detected objects in the study of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian England has greatly increased through reporting to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) and the Early Medieval Corpus (EMC). There are now thousands more artefacts and coins known than a decade ago which, in conjunction with fieldwork, have the potential to revolutionise our understanding of the early medieval period.

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