Medieval ‘treasure’ found near Ripon

AN intricately-carved medieval ring discovered near Ripon is an important archaeological find which qualifies as “treasure”, a coroner has ruled.

The piece was found by metal detectorist Lindsey Holland close to Ripon on May 16, 2010 and sent to the British Museum.

In a report to North Yorkshire coroner Rob Turnbull, experts from the museum described the find as an oval silver-gilt seal matrix which would have formed the bezel, or top part, of a finger-ring dating from the 13th or 14th centuries.

Read the rest of this article...

City archaeologists make filthy find

Two 300-year-old latrines unearthed from beneath Kultorvet Square are offering up answers about how everyday Copenhageners traded, ate and suffered in the 18th-century. And those answers are accompanied by some still powerful odours.

”Well, it smells like rotten eggs,” archaeologist and excavation expert Hoda El-Sharnouby told Politiken newspaper.

El-Sharnouby’s team made the stinky but stunning find which includes two outhouses filled with nearly 300-year-old faeces. The privies and their contents are remarkably well-preserved, thanks to the low oxygen content in the city’s soil.

Read the rest of this article...

Experts hail Pictish royal monastery find

AERIAL photographs showing a faint line in fields around a village in Highland Perthshire have mystified archaeologists for decades. Crop marks in the village of Fortingall, famous for its 5,000-year-old yew tree, seem to indicate an ancient boundary long since buried and forgotten.

Now an archaeological dig may have uncovered the secret: the site is believed to have been a royal monastery dating from the time when the Picts were converting to Christianity more than 1,300 years ago.

Dr Oliver O'Grady and a band of local volunteers opened up two exploratory trenches to reveal a wide bank faced with large upright stones that may have once stood as high as two metres.

Read the rest of this article...

Skeletons reveal our ancestors’ fear of the undead

TWO skeletons discovered with stones wedged in their mouths were buried this way around 1,300 years ago to prevent them rising from their graves to haunt the living.

A documentary featuring the work of archaeologists at Institute of Technology, Sligo, to be screened tomorrow, suggests the practice aimed to prevent the corpses becoming "revenants".

The documentary says such "deviant burials" are associated with vampires and revenants — ghosts who were believed to come back among the living — unless steps were taken to keep them in their graves.

Read the rest of this article...

Human-Neanderthal coupling was rare: study

Scientists have shown that modern humans have some traces of genes from Neanderthals, but a study out Monday suggests that any breeding between the two was most likely a rare event.

The new computational model, based on DNA samples from modern humans in France and China, shows successful coupling happened at a rate of less than two percent.

The research suggests that either inter-species sex was very taboo, or that the hybrid offspring had trouble surviving, according to the findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Read the rest of this article...

5 Other Surprise Attacks That Changed History

The headline writers at USA Today put it this way: "9/11: How One Day Changed Our World." National Geographic observed that the attacks of Sept. 11 would "alter the course of history."

But the shocking assaults in 2001 on the World Trade towers, the Pentagon and the planned hit on the Capitol were not the first surprise attacks that changed the way humans do business.

Through the centuries, there have been unexpected strikes on civilian targets that occurred during wars — declared or not — and peacetime attacks that came completely out of the blue. The Sept. 11 attacks fall into the latter category.

Read the rest of this article...

Perge excavations turn 65 with Turkish archaeologists

Excavations at Perge, an ancient city in Antalya province, have entered their 65th year. The excavation leader believes the ancient city was an artisan workshop
The dig at Perge, the longest-running excavation carried out by Turks, will mark its 65th year on Sept. 15.

Archaeological work at the ancient city of Perge in southern Turkey passed the 65-year mark recently and is successfully restoring many columns along the city’s streets, according the leader of the excavations.

“The Perge excavations are the longest-running in Turkey, and we are honored to be working on the site,” said Haluk Abbasoğlu, who has been leading the excavations since 1985.

Read the rest of this article...

Iron age hill fort excavation reveals ‘possible suburbia

The most intensive investigation ever undertaken of Britain’s largest iron age hill fort is expected to reveal new details of how Britons lived 2,000 years ago – and maybe even that they were almost as suburban as we are.

Stretching across 80 hilltop hectares, behind three miles of ramparts, the fort, at Ham Hill in Somerset, and the outline of its history have been known for many years.

The Durotriges tribe, which lived on the hill, was subdued in AD45 by soldiers of the 2nd Legion under the command of the future emperor Vespasian, but what the Romans found there: a street system lined with houses on their own plots of land, is what archaeologists from Cambridge and Cardiff universities hope to uncover more fully in excavations over the next three summers.

Read the rest of this article...

Iron Age findings help build picture

AN IRON Age community discovered in the Daventry district has been described as of “regional, if not national importance”.


New investigations at the site, which is located at Daventry International Railfreight Terminal (DIRFT), have given a greater insight into what happened at the 2,000-year-old community.

The findings, including evidence of settlement such as hut circles, will be discussed at the Community Landscape Archaeology Survey Project (CLASP) annual meeting on Monday (September 12).

Read the rest of this article...

Dig therapy for injured soldiers on Salisbury Plain

Injured soldiers from Gloucestershire-based 1st Battalion The Rifles, who have returned from front line duties in Afghanistan, are helping with an archaeological dig on Salisbury Plain.

The project is designed to help them recover from battlefield injuries, including combat stress.

Watch the video...

Human Ancestor May Put Twist in Origin Story, New Studies Say

Two-million-year-old bones—and possibly skin—from a pair of primate fossils are offering new insight into the apelike species that may have given rise to the first humans.

Known as Australopithecus sediba, the ancient human ancestor was discovered in the Malapa region of South Africa in 2008 and was described for the first time last April.

Now a suite of five studies, published in this week's issue of the journal Science, is delving deeper into the species' unusual mix of human and apelike traits to help refine A. sediba's place in the time line of human evolution.

Read the rest of this article...

Life in a Saxon hall

The re-enactment society Regia Anglorum is reconstructing an early medieval Saxon hall in Kent using materials and construction methods of the time.

Regia Anglorum is a re-enactment society that aims to recreate as accurately as possible life in Anglo-Saxon and Viking Britain. Over the past 10 years, we have been building the Wychurst project – a fortified manor hall, using materials and construction methods of the time – on three acres of land in Kent. We have a rotation of 60-odd people who work on the project in the middle weekend of each month.

The hall is 30ft high, 60ft long and 30ft wide, and is based on the West Hall at Cheddar, built around 850. No buildings of this type from the period have survived, so we did an enormous amount of research from archaeological dig reports and written accounts. It is built entirely in English oak, mostly sourced from within a mile of the site, which makes it a very accurate reconstruction. It is a great hall, where the local lord would have lived with his family and a few of his men. It would have served as town hall, law court, police station and as a place for protection.

Read the rest of this article...

Echoes of Elgin Marbles: Turkey asks UK to return ancient sculpture

Turkey's government is calling on the United Kingdom to return the head of an ancient marble statue taken more than a century ago.

The object, currently in the stores of London's Victoria & Albert museum, is, says a museum spokesperson, a "life-size marble head of a child, with curling hair, broken off at the neck."

Read the rest of this article...

Experts hail Pictish royal monastery find

AERIAL photographs showing a faint line in fields around a village in Highland Perthshire have mystified archaeologists for decades. Crop marks in the village of Fortingall, famous for its 5,000-year-old yew tree, seem to indicate an ancient boundary long since buried and forgotten.

Now an archaeological dig may have uncovered the secret: the site is believed to have been a royal monastery dating from the time when the Picts were converting to Christianity more than 1,300 years ago.

Dr Oliver O'Grady and a band of local volunteers opened up two exploratory trenches to reveal a wide bank faced with large upright stones that may have once stood as high as two metres.

Read the rest of this article...

Henry VIII’s Nonsuch Palace rebuilt in miniature

That which no equal has in Art or Fame, Britons deservedly do Nonesuch name’, translates the comment of a German visitor to Nonsuch in 1568. Nonsuch Palace in Surrey was the greatest piece of dynastic propaganda erected by the English crown before the 19th century. Built by Henry VIII to rival the palaces of the French King, Francis I, Nonsuch no longer survives as it was demolished by a mistress of King Charles II in 1682-90. However, thanks to research carried out over decades by an Oxford professor, a huge model has been unveiled that provides an accurate recreation of the palace that once symbolised the power and the grandeur of the Tudor dynasty.

Read the rest of this article...

Before They Left Africa, Modern Humans Interbred With Archaic Humans, Reports DNA Study

It has become increasingly clear through DNA studies that modern humans may have interbred with Neanderthals in Eurasia following their migration from their ancestral African homeland. Now, based on new DNA research conducted by a team of scientists from the University of Arizona and the University of California, San Francisco, it seems that modern humans had already established a pattern of mixing it up with their more archaic cousins before they even left their southerly African climes.

Read the rest of this article...

Ancient humans were mixing it up

Anatomically modern humans interbred with more archaic hominin forms even before they migrated out of Africa, a UA-led team of researchers has found.

It is now widely accepted that the species Homo sapiens originated in Africa and eventually spread throughout the world. But did those early humans interbreed with more ancestral forms of the genus Homo, for example Homo erectus, the "upright walking man," Homo habilis, – the "tool-using man" or Homo neanderthalensis, the first artists of cave-painting fame?

Direct studies of ancient DNA from Neanderthal bones suggest interbreeding did occur after anatomically modern humans had migrated from their evolutionary cradle in Africa to the cooler climates of Eurasia, but what had happened in Africa remained a mystery – until now.

Read the rest of this article...

Could this be the oldest pub in Scotland?

A historic site's true purpose may have been revealed - as an Iron Age boozer.

Experts believe that 4600 years ago, thirsty natives may have been enjoying a pie and pint at Jarlshof in Shetland.

They say the layout of the stone settlement near Sumburgh Head suggests it may be the oldest pub ever found in Britain.

And a dozen or so quernstones - for grinding barley - indicate it may have served as both a drinking den and a bakery.

Read the rest of this article...

Model of lost Surrey Tudor palace unveiled

A model of a Surrey palace built by Henry VIII and that once symbolised the power and the grandeur of the Tudor dynasty is to be unveiled.

Nonsuch Palace in Cheam was constructed to rival those of the French King, Francis I.

It was demolished by a mistress of King Charles II in the late 17th century.

Research carried out by an Oxford University professor has now led to a 2.2m by 1.2m (7ft 2in by 3ft 11in) model of the palace being made.

Read the rest of this article...

1,700-year-old map of Roman roads used for online journey planner

A Dutch historian has used a unique 1,700 year old map of Roman roads to create an online journey planner giving the destinations, distances and timings of routes used by ancient travellers in the days of empire.

Routes are based on the Tabula Peutingeriana, a one of a kind chart, which shows an imperial Roman road network, or curses public's, that stretches from Britain to the river Ganges that flows through India and Bangladesh.

The huge map, last updated in the third or fourth century, shows 2,760 towns with lists of distances and destinations on the Roman roads connecting them, all set out on a scroll of parchment almost 23 feet long.

Read the rest of this article...