Archaeology News

12/4/2010 The tomb of Hecatomnus found?--the story is wrong about the date. There is no way that this sarcophagus dates to 800 BC, as the story indicates. It also does not appear that there is a definite connection to Hecatomnus, who was the king of Caria in the early 4th century BC. The tomb also has a keystone arch. I would not be surprised if this turns out to be closer to the end of the 4th century than the beginning.

12/4/2010 Passage grave with intact burials from the Orkneys

11/27/2010 This story about Chinese villagers being descended from Roman soldiers is getting an amazing amount of play--a much more likely reason for a genetic connection to western Europeans is a connection with the Tocharians.

11/25/2010 Archaeological evidence for the Battle of Towton

11/23/2010 A gaffe, perhaps, but if made completely out of gold, the UK Culture minister did no harm to the bracelet

11/22/2010 A Roman bath in Jerusalem

11/15/2010 Blurb on excavations at Nemea; one of our majors, Michael Koletsos, participated

11/15/2010 A Buddhist monastery in Afghanistan

11/7/2010 Not good: collapse of the House of the Gladiators at Pompeii

11/6/2010 Interesting aerial photograph from WW II reveals Tudor-era garden

11/3/2010 I would take the claim of sex-crazed Neanderthals with a grain of salt

11/2/2010 Blurb on an exhibition on Egyptian Book of the Dead at the British Museum

11/1/2010 Newly discovered passage grave in the Orkneys

11/1/2010 A new Bronze Age hoard from Essex in England

11/1/2010 Origins of the Black Plague

10/29/2010 New ideas about the construction of Silbury Hill in England

10/29/2010 Early evidence for pressure-flaking and heat treatment of stone from Southern Africa

10/24/2010 Kinda cool-"History of the World" in 100 Objects

10/21/2010 A Chalkolithic period door from Switzerland

10/18/2010 A somewhat confused synthesis of recent work done on the Linear Pottery Culture (aka the LBK Culture)

10/4/2010 Newly-discovered statue of Amenhotep III

9/28/2010 A Mediterranean migrant in Bronze Age Britain

9/22/2010 This appears to be a common kind of Byzantine burial that is covered by roof tiles--where there is one of these things, there are undoubtedly many more nearby.

9/20/2010 Evidence for a somewhat earlier migration of homo sapiens sapiens from Africa--it is eventually going to turn out that small groups were coming out of Africa more or less constantly during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic. The interesting issue will be finding out what happened when later migrants encountered earlier ones.

9/14/2010 Intact Roman helmet from Cumbria

9/8/2010 Progressive backpedaling on the Amazonian rainforest--do you remember, boys and girls, about all of those age-old rain forests unsullied by human settlements?

9/7/2010 An Egyptian desert town

9/4/2010 A complete Roman lantern

9/2/2010 Baltic shipwreck yields old champagne

9/2/2010 Natufian feasting in Israel

9/1/2010 A Moabite Iron Age temple

9/1/2010 A Viking-era earthwork

9/1/2010 Homo antecessor cannibalism?

9/1/2010 No mammoth-killing asteroid according to these guys--It appears that we have the makings of an academic feud here

8/30/2010 A good year for crop marks in the UK

8/27/2010 Irish railroad workers' grave in Pennsylvania

8/26/2010 Possible legionary headquarters found in Yorkshire

8/26/2010 A new theory about Oetzi the Iceman's burial

8/26/2010 Early projectile points in S. Africa

8/25/2010 A Paleo-Indian skeleton from underwater cave in Mexico

8/22/2010 Wall paintings in Petra

8/20/2010 A huge Roman canal

8/18/2010 Interesting if true-Roman villa in Britain might belong to the emperor Pertinax.

8/18/2010 Roundhead mass grave excavated

8/17/2010 Pompeii victims roasted, not suffocated

8/13/2010 Tomb with marble sarcophagus found in Turkey. The date given ("2800 years old") must be incorrect and is off by 400 years at least. This thing cannot possibly be any earlier than the 4th century BC.

7/21/2010 New henge at Stonehenge; more

7/15/2010 Ship found in lower Manhattan landfill; I think that they mean that they will send the timbers to a lab for dendrochronology, not endocrinology

7/8/2010 Hoarding behavior of this Roman-era sort goes far back into the Bronze Age

7/7/2010 Evidence of homo antecessor in Britain; more

6/30/2010 I had never heard of this henge

6/6/2010 Paleolithic ochre production

6/2/2010 The earliest Neanderthals in Britain

5/11/2010 Remote sensing in Belize

5/7/2010 Neanderthals & h. sap.²doing the wild thing?

4/8/2010 A new Australopithecus species; more; even more

3/25/2010 A new hominin

3/17/2010 Dog origins in Near Eastern gray wolves

3/16/2010 More Tarim mummies

3/12/2010 Anglo-Saxons give Vikings a rude reception

2/19/2010 The Battle of Bosworth located

2/15/2010 Finds of Paleolithic tools on Crete point to really ancient mariners

1/22/2010 This study of yDNA suggesting an expansion from Anatolia to Europe ca. 10,000 BC differs from mtDNA studies

1/21/2010 Queen Eadgyth’s remains possibly found in Germany

1/9/2010 The research about Neanderthal jewelry/cosmetics is interesting, but why the authors feel the need to slay the “dumb Neanderthal” strawman escapes me.

1/4/2010 A Late Period tomb at Sakkara in Egypt

1/1/2010 mtDNA testing of an Upper Paleolithic man

12/28/2009 The Tomb of Cao in China

12/18/2009 The Coso Petroglyphs

12/15/2009 Putting flowers in graves goes way back

12/13/2009 File this under the “been there, done that” file: that Greek temples overwhelmingly face east has been apparent for 150 years

12/7/2009 The not-so-great health of ancient Egyptians

12/7/2009 More Neolithic folk living in peaceful harmony

12/3/2009 Ever wondered what an aurochs skull looks like?

12/2/2009 An exhibition opens on “Old Europe”

11/20/2009 Puzzling animal extinctions

11/18/2009 Atherosclerotic Egyptians

11/10/2009 Mayan paintings

11/10/2009 Cambyses’ lost army found in the Sahara?

11/4/2009 Roman-era grave in Thrace

11/1/2009 Important Mayan site found in lake

10/28/2009 Moving the Battle of Bosworth

10/16/2009 We are all girly-men and girly-women according to this anthropologist

10/12/2009 Some well-preserved artifacts from the Mary Rose

10/6/2009 Some serious high tech brought to bear on a possible hidden Leonardo painting

10/2/2009 OMG-Bluehenge!

10/1/2009 Newly discovered early hominid, Ardipithecus ramidus

10/1/2009 Excavations at Portus near Rome; more

9/24/2009 Hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold artifacts discovered; a much more informative post here

9/17/2009 Conservation of Viking artifacts

9/8/2009 Fido...it's what was for dinner?

9/7/2009 Easter Island sculptures

9/3/2009 A Canaanite wall in East Jerusalem

9/3/2009 An earlier date for Acheulean tools (and presumably Homo erectus) in Europe

8/28/2009 A really nice hoard of silver

8/26/2009 More on "hobbits"

8/15/2009 A new theory about the construction of Hadrian's Wall

8/14/2009 Another early British trackway

8/14/2009 Early heat treatment of stone-knapping materials

8/12/2009 Embittered Neanderthals

8/9/2009 New ideas about Cahokia

7/30/2009 Roman Altinum emerges

7/23/2009 Roman shipwrecks

7/16/2009 Upper Paleolithic Britain

6/29/2009 Neanderthal...it's what's for dinner!??

6/26/2009 If this discovery of Upper Paleolithic flutes pans out, it will cast new light on the debate over human cognitive development; more

6/25/2009 X-raying a Roman-era Egyptian mummy

6/19/2009 The new Acropolis museum opens

6/18/2009 A discovery at our own local site of Angel Mounds--the investigators believe that this was one of the earliest Mississippian structures on the site, comparable in date to Mound A

6/16/2009 A possibly intact Aztec tomb

6/16/2009 Neolithic graves in England

6/11/2009 A mass of Celtic skeletons

6/5/2009 Paleolithic barbeque

6/5/2009 Mayan plant motifs

6/4/2009 A witch-bottle

6/2/2009 Arguments over the earliest pottery continue

5/29/2009 A short article on undeciphered scripts

5/28/2009 Controversy over Norse presence on Baffin Island

5/27/2009 Origins of leprosy

5/22/2009 New and interesting dating technique applicable to ceramics

5/13/2009 A new and very early "Venus" figurine from Germany