Archaeology in Europe |
- West Cumbrian dig uncovers Roman building
- Stanton Drew – new Great Circle entrance found
- Ancient Greek ships carried more than just wine
- Columbus blamed for Little Ice Age
- 4,000 years of history crashes to the ground
- Will DNA Swabs Launch CSI: Cargo Scene Investigation?
- Göbeklitepe site unveils mystery
- Prehistoric Painters Planned Ahead
- Biggest haul of Roman gold in Britain could have been found
| West Cumbrian dig uncovers Roman building Posted: 16 Oct 2011 08:44 AM PDT The first week of a 12-day excavation on land below Papcastle has uncovered remains of a Roman building which could have been used as a Roman bath house or a high status building. Grampus Heritage is leading the community excavation on land owned by Robert and Edmund Jackson. Archaeologists found evidence of walls of a large Roman building, shards of pottery and metal objects. Read the rest of this article...  |
| Stanton Drew – new Great Circle entrance found Posted: 16 Oct 2011 08:41 AM PDT New evidence of archaeological features in and around the three prehistoric stone circles at Stanton Drew has been revealed. The results of a geophysical survey carried out by Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society (BACAS) in collaboration with Bath & North East Somerset Council's Archaeological Officer in summer 2010 have just been published. The 2010 survey was led by John Oswin and John Richards of BACAS and shows evidence of below-ground archaeological features, including a second entrance into the henge monument first identified by English Heritage in 1997. The second entrance is south-west facing and forms a narrow causeway, defined by two large terminal ends of the circular ditch. Further work at the South-West Circle suggests that it sits on a deliberately levelled platform. Read the rest of this article...  |
| Ancient Greek ships carried more than just wine Posted: 16 Oct 2011 08:39 AM PDT A DNA analysis of ancient storage jars suggests that Greek sailors traded a wide range of foods — not just wine, as many historians have assumed. The study, in press at the Journal of Archaeological Science1, finds evidence in nine jars taken from Mediterranean shipwrecks of vegetables, herbs and nuts. The researchers say DNA testing of underwater artefacts from different time periods could help to reveal how such complex markets developed across the Mediterranean. Archaeologist Brendan Foley of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts and geneticist Maria Hansson of Lund University, Sweden, retrieved DNA from nine amphorae — the storage containers of the ancient world — from sunken ships dating from the fifth to the third centuries BC. Read the rest of this article...  |
| Columbus blamed for Little Ice Age Posted: 16 Oct 2011 08:38 AM PDT By sailing to the New World, Christopher Columbus and the other explorers who followed may have set off a chain of events that cooled Europe's climate for centuries. The European conquest of the Americas decimated the people living there, leaving large areas of cleared land untended. Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University. "We have a massive reforestation event that's sequestering carbon … coincident with the European arrival," says Nevle, who described the consequences of this change October 11 at the Geological Society of America annual meeting. Read the rest of this article...  |
| 4,000 years of history crashes to the ground Posted: 16 Oct 2011 08:36 AM PDT An ancient monument has crashed to the ground after standing for more than 4,000 years as an important landmark. The famous standing stone at Bedd Morris, on Newport mountain, was snapped over the weekend, toppling over and crushing a nearby fence. Archaeologist Professor Geoffrey Wainwright, an expert who has worked on several sites in the Preselis, plans to play an active role in getting the stone reinstated. He said: "It's a tragedy, the stone has snapped and it's a real mess. Read the rest of this article...  |
| Will DNA Swabs Launch CSI: Cargo Scene Investigation? Posted: 16 Oct 2011 08:33 AM PDT Ceramic jugs known as amphorae were the cardboard boxes of ancient Greece. Produced in the millions, they contained goods that were shipped across the Mediterranean and beyond. But what was in them? In a new study that uses a DNA-based method inspired by crime-scene protocols, scientists say they've uncovered a cornucopia of cargoes, but other researchers are skeptical of the technique. Shipwrecks and other sites have yielded plenty of intact amphorae. Maddeningly, nearly all are empty, devoid of obvious clues to what they once held. Researchers have scraped bits of ceramic from the vessel's interior to look for leftover genetic material. In the new study, however, they also turned to a less destructive method straight from television's CSI: swiping the amphorae with a swab. The idea came from the Massachusetts State Police, whom the investigators called for leads. A team led by maritime archaeologist Brendan Foley of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution tested the new protocol on nine 5th to 3rd century B.C.E. amphorae that had been languishing in a government storage room in Athens for more than a decade. All had been hauled up in fishermen's nets before being handed over to the Greek government in the 1990s. Read the rest of this article...  |
| Göbeklitepe site unveils mystery Posted: 16 Oct 2011 08:31 AM PDT The latest excavation in Göbeklitepe in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa reveals that inhabitants 12,000 years ago also had a belief system and a certain culture. The remains show there is much more to be discovered from those ancient people, according to scholars. Recent excavations at the Göbeklitepe archaeological site have revealed that ancient people living there 12,000 years ago engaged in agriculture, processed leather, made sculptures and rock accessories and possessed a significant belief system. The site in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa includes important information on the people 12 millennia ago, said Assistant Professor Cihat Kürkçüoğlu of the local Harran University. Read the rest of this article...  |
| Prehistoric Painters Planned Ahead Posted: 16 Oct 2011 08:29 AM PDT When Vincent Van Gogh moved to the southern French town of Arles in 1888, he painted nearly 200 vivid canvasses before cutting off his left ear in a fit of madness. This artistic explosion was possible in part because Van Gogh kept his brushes, paints, and palette constantly at the ready. A new discovery in South Africa suggests that prehistoric human painters also planned ahead, using ochre paint kits as early as 100,000 years ago. But just what they used the paints for is still a matter of debate. Red or yellow ochre, an iron-containing pigment found in some clays, is ubiquitous at early modern human sites in Africa and the Near East. Some researchers think the earliest known art comes from the site of Blombos in South Africa, about 300 kilometers east of Cape Town, where pieces of ochre incised with an abstract design have been dated to 77,000 years old. Scientists have found even earlier signs of ochre use at Blombos and other sites as old as 165,000 years, but solid evidence that the pigment was used in artistic or other symbolic communication has been lacking. Read the rest of this article...  |
| Biggest haul of Roman gold in Britain could have been found Posted: 16 Oct 2011 08:23 AM PDT Details of the treasure remained sketchy and the identity of the lucky metal detecting enthusiast has not been revealed. But it is understood Worcestershire County Council and the county coroner have been informed because of the potential archaeological significance. The treasure, found at Bredon Hill, the site of an Iron Age fort in Worcestershire, is already being compared with the Staffordshire Hoard, the country's biggest ever find of Anglo Saxon gold. Read the rest of this article...  |
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