Olympic digs yield historic finds

Valuable archeological finds have been unearthed on two Olympics 2012 sites.
Pottery from the 4th Century and a Roman coin were found on the London stadium site and Iron Age activity found on the Aquatics Centre site.

The finds will form part of the Museum of London's collection but digging activity will not delay building work, the games' organisers say.

Archeological work to date the items and place them in historical context will now take place.

The first Londoners lived in thatched circular mud huts on the site that will house the Aquatics Centre, but in the Iron Age would have been a small area of dry land in a valley of lakes, rivers and marshes, archeologists believe.

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WESSEX ARCHAEOLOGY TO EMBARK ON MARINE HERITAGE PROMOTION

Wessex Archaeology is embarking on a voyage into the waters of marine heritage promotion in the South West.

The new project, supported by £50,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, aims to educate both school children and the public about the new ways marine heritage is being explored, and some of the amazing new discoveries that have been made. It covers four counties – Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and Gloucestershire – and will involve ‘time travel’ learning packs for use in the classroom and on the web.

“In the last few years there has been an upsurge in the amount of work done on marine archaeology,” explained project leader Euan McNeill. “This ranges from surveying the submerged landscapes that Britain’s first pre-historic settlers walked on; to World War Two aircraft crash sites.”

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Visitors flock to crannog centre

AS THEIR woven hazel gates have closed for the season, the Iron Age team at the Scottish Crannog Centre are celebrating a remarkable and hugely successful 10th anniversary year featuring record-breaking visitor numbers, European links and study tours, and a haul of top awards.

The buzz began in pre-season, when the Centre formally joined seven other European archaeological open air museums in a Culture 2000 project known as liveARCH (www.liveARCH.eu). The aim of the three year project is to share best practice and skills between partners in Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Norway, Scotland and Sweden.

Following the launch of the project at the Eindhoven Historic Openlucht Museum in the Netherlands in January, the Crannog Crew hosted the first congress in Pitlochry in March focusing on visitor engagement and interpretation. The meeting brought considerable economic benefit to the wider Highland Perthshire area, and fostered pan-European project plans, ideas and friendships.

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Sick Rams Used as Ancient Bioweapons

Infected rams and donkeys were the earliest bioweapons, according to a new study which dates the use of biological warfare back more than 3,300 years.

According to a review published in the Journal of Medical Hypotheses, two ancient populations, the Arzawans and the Hittites, engaged "in mutual use of contaminated animals" during the 1320-1318 B.C. Anatolian war.

"The animals were carriers of Francisella tularensis, the causative agent of tularemia," author Siro Trevisanato, a molecular biologist based in Oakville, Ontario, Canada told Discovery News.

Also known as "rabbit fever," tularemia is a devastating disease which even today can be fatal, if not treated with antibiotics. Its symptoms range from skin ulcers, swollen and painful lymph glands to pneumonia, fever, chills, progressive weakness and respiratory failure.

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Ancient Greenland mystery has a simple answer, it seems

(AXcess News) QASSIARSUK, Greenland - A shipload of visitors arrived in the fjord overnight, so Ingibjorg Gisladottir dressed like a Viking and headed out to work in the ruins scattered along the northern edge of this tiny farming village.

Qassiarsuk is tiny (population: 56), remote, and short on amenities (no store, public restrooms, or roads to the outside world), but some 3,000 visitors come here each year to see the remains of Brattahlid, the medieval farming village founded here by Erik the Red around the year 985.

When they arrive, Ms. Gisladottir, an employee of the museum, is there to greet them in an authentic hooded smock and not-so-authentic rubber boots. "There were more visitors this year than last," she says. "People want to know what happened to the Norse."

The Greenland Norse colonized North America 500 years before Christopher Columbus "discovered" it, establishing farms in the sheltered fjords of southern Greenland, exploring Labrador and the Canadian Arctic, and setting up a short-lived outpost in Newfoundland.

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Historians hustle as flood threatens ancient town

A large settlement dating back to the first century BC has been found in the Russian republic of North Ossetia. But since the archaeological site is in a valley next to a hydroplant under construction, there's a race to unlock its secrets, before it's flooded.

Most of the 60 people working at the site in the Zaramag Valley are amateurs with professionals guiding them.

Every day they antique jewellery, tools, weapons and crockery that once belonged to the ancient tribe of Alans, the ancestors of modern Ossetians.

But in just a few weeks time, the whole valley will be flooded. It will become a reservoir for Zaramag hydroplant. Once built, it will solve North Ossetia's energy problems.

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A VIKING LANDSCAPE: THE MOSFELL ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROJECT

Location: Iceland Length: 16 min.

This video describes the Mosfell Archaeological Project, an interdisciplinary research project employing saga studies, archaeology, physical anthropology, and environmental sciences. The project's goal is to construct a picture of human habitation and environmental change in the Mosfell region of southwestern Iceland. Work at Kirkjuhll in 2002 revealed a conversion period wooden stave church and a Christian cemetery with skeletons. The Mosfell Project contributes to the larger study of Viking Age and later medieval Iceland.

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KEN FINDS HIS MIDAS TOUCH IN THE FIELDS

Fields of gold could be lacing the countryside after a second ancient coin was discovered.

Ken Jacobs (60), chairman of the Scunthorpe Metal Detectors' club, found a whole noble - dating from the 14th century - in a field near Winteringham.

The find comes just weeks after Craig Addison featured in the Telegraph after he dug up a half noble in the Roxby area.

Mr Jacobs' 32mm find, which dates back to the era of Edward III, would have been worth thousands of pounds then. Today it is worth about £500.

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Ancient Roman road map unveiled

The Tabula Peutingeriana is one of the Austrian National Library's greatest treasures.

The parchment scroll, made in the Middle Ages, is the only surviving copy of a road map from the late Roman Empire.

The document, which is almost seven metres long, shows the network of main Roman roads from Spain to India.

It is normally never shown to the public. The parchment is extremely fragile, and reacts badly to daylight.

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Roman burial site uncovered

A ROMAN burial ground has been discovered on land in Staverton near Trowbridge.

Over the past two months archaeologists have extracted the remains of four Roman people from the ground. Some of the graves contained two skeletons.

They believe the field behind New Terrace is on the edge of a Roman settlement dating back to about 55AD.

Known locally as Blacklands the field is a source of much superstition for locals who have passed on folklore from generation to generation about the ghosts that lurked beneath the soil.

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Lupercale expert sceptical of 'Romulus, Remus' cave

A LEADING Italian archaeologist said that the grotto whose discovery was announced this week in Rome is not the sacred cave linked to the myth of the city's foundation by Romulus and Remus.

The Culture Ministry and experts who presented the find said they were “reasonably certain” the cavern is the Lupercale - a sanctuary worshipped for centuries by Romans because, according to legend, a wolf nursed the twin brothers there.

But Adriano La Regina, Rome's superintendent of archaeology from 1976 to 2004, said ancient descriptions of the place suggest the Lupercale is elsewhere - 50 to 70 metres northwest of the cave discovered near Emperor Augustus' palace.

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Gene study supports single main migration across Bering Strait

Did a relatively small number of people from Siberia who trekked across a Bering Strait land bridge some 12,000 years ago give rise to the native peoples of North and South America?

Or did the ancestors of today’s native peoples come from other parts of Asia or Polynesia, arriving multiple times at several places on the two continents, by sea as well as by land, in successive migrations that began as early as 30,000 years ago?

The questions – featured on magazine covers and TV specials – have agitated anthropologists, archaeologists and others for decades.

University of Michigan scientists, working with an international team of geneticists and anthropologists, have produced new genetic evidence that’s likely to hearten proponents of the land bridge theory. The study, published online in PLoS Genetics, is one of the most comprehensive analyses so far among efforts to use genetic data to shed light on the topic.

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Knights Templar to Seek Traces of Order's Members in Bulgaria

The Knights Templar are to launch excavation works in the Danube town of Russe to find out traces of order's members, who have once passed through Bulgaria and the Balkans.

The statement was made at a Saturday press conference, given by the Order in the National Palace of Culture in Sofia.

The order is to finance the initiative, called "Nisovo Project", is to be launched after Russe citizens signalled they noticed "interesting stone crosses" in the region.

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Bear hunting altered genetics more than Ice Age isolation

It was not the isolation of the Ice Age that determined the genetic distribution of bears, as has long been thought. This is shown by an international research team led from Uppsala University in Sweden in the latest issue of Molecular Ecology. One possible interpretation is that the hunting of bears by humans and human land use have been crucial factors.

Twenty thousand years ago Europe was covered by ice down to Germany, and the climate in the rest of Europe was such that several species were confined to the southern regions, like the Iberian Peninsula and Italy. These regions were refuges, areas where species could survive during cold periods and then re-colonize central and northern Europe when it got warmer. But the brown bear was not limited to these regions­it could roam freely across major parts of southern and central Europe. The current study analyzed mitochondria from bear remains. Some of the fossils are 20,000 years old. The analysis shows that the genetic pattern in these ancient brown bears differed from that of bears living today.

“Previously today’s genetic structure was interpreted as showing that the brown bear was isolated in southern Europe, just like many other species. But our study shows that this was not the case,” says Love Dalén, one of the Swedes participating in the study.

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'Dramatic' ancient cemetery found

A freelance archaeologist has uncovered what is thought to be the only known Anglo-Saxon royal burial site in the north of England.

Spectacular gold jewellery, weapons and clothing were found at the 109-grave cemetery, believed to date from the middle of the 7th Century.

Excavations were carried out after Steve Sherlock studied an aerial photo of the land near Redcar, Teesside.

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Römisches Bauen in Hessen

Baubeginn für zwei römische Häuser vor den Toren der Saalburg
Planzeichnung der beiden römischen Streifenhäuser (Grafik: Römerkastell Saalburg)

Vor den Toren des Römerkastells Saalburg in Bad Homburg , im Bereich des früheren Kastelldorfes, haben die Bauarbeiten für zwei Häuser begonnen, die einmal Kasse, Museumsshop und Kiosk aufnehmen sollen.

Die beiden Häuser werden im Stil sogenannter Streifenhäuser errichtet, die für die römischen Dörfer (vici) charakteristisch waren: langrechteckige Häuser mit einem Vordach, die mit der Schmalseite zur Straße stehen. Der Bau der beiden unterschiedlich großen Häuser soll im Sommer 2008 abgeschlossen sein.

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Czech archaeologists find unique Virgin Mary statuette

PRAGUE, Nov. 20 (Xinhua) -- Czech archaeologists uncovered a unique eight centimeter-long ceramic statuette of Virgin Mary with Jesus from the late 14th century in the center of Usti nad Labem of the Czech Republic, head of the archaeological research Marta Cvrkova said on Tuesday.

Similar finds are very rare in the country, the Czech news agency CTK quoted Cvrkova as saying.

The elaborated artifact, which was probably part of a family alter-piece, is only slightly damaged, CTK said.

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Anglo-Saxon gold jewellery is uncovered at burial site

ARCHAEOLOGISTS have uncovered a 1,400-year-old burial ground filled with gold jewellery and ancient artifacts at a secret location in the North-East, it was revealed last night.

Experts hailed the find as one of the best examples of an Anglo-Saxon burial ground ever uncovered - and may even have been the final resting place of a king or queen.

The 109-grave cemetery was discovered on land in Loftus, east Cleveland.

It is arranged in a rectangular pattern and dates from the middle of the 7th Century.

The cemetery, bed burial and high status objects are considered to all indicate the people buried must have connections with Anglo-Saxon royalty.

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Rome uncovers its founding moment

Rome has revealed what its leading archeologist says is "one of the greatest discoveries ever made", a lost shrine dedicated to the ancient city's mythical founders.

Andrea Carandini told a press conference yesterday that a large vaulted hall beneath the Palatine hill was almost certainly the fabled Lupercale - a sanctuary believed by ancient Romans to be the cave where the twin boys Romulus and Remus were suckled by a she-wolf. The professor acknowledged the evidence was as yet not totally conclusive, but said only "one doubt in thousand" remained.

Decorated with seashells and coloured marble, the domed cave was found close to the site of the palace of the first emperor, Caesar Augustus, by archaeologists. Ancient texts indicate that the sanctuary was indeed near the palace; a document from the 16th century, when it was still accessible, recorded that the emperor had embellished it with a white imperial eagle.

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What is the secret of the Pit of Bones?

I'm standing on a bunch of boring hills, on the edge of the high and dusty Castilian plains. This is the kind of Spain that tourists avoid.

Yet in archaeological terms this site is El Dorado. Because these hills of the Sierra Atapuerca have recently given up treasures which promise to change our ideas of human evolution - and the entire history of religion.

A few weeks back, for instance, the archaeologists in the so-called Elephant Pit found a humble human tooth. But it was a tooth with an ancestry: it was 1.2m years old.

Previously, the theory was that mankind evolved in Africa, and then fanned out across the world, about one million years ago. As part of this dispersal, man migrated northwards and westwards into Europe, maybe around 800,000-600,000BC.

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