Past Articles
| Thursday, July 29 |
| · | Dead Sea Scrolls Mystery Solved? (0) |
| Thursday, July 22 |
| · | "Lost" Languages to Be Resurrected by Computers (0) |
| · | Bowls of Fingers & Baby Victims, More Found in Maya Tomb (0) |
| Tuesday, July 06 |
| · | China says it can't remember the Dalai Lama's birthday (0) |
| · | Baby deaths link to Roman 'brothel' in Buckinghamshire (0) |
| Friday, June 18 |
| · | Pagan-Cult Objects found in rock hollow (0) |
| Wednesday, June 16 |
| · | Bright Green Comet Easy to See This Week (0) |
| · | Swarm Of Toxic Jellyfish Found Off UK Coast (0) |
| Monday, June 14 |
| · | Wiltshire vicar revives ancient archery law (0) |
| · | Sudden oak death spreads across channel to south Wales (0) |
| · | Experts In A Spin Over Nero's Rotating Room (0) |
| Friday, June 11 |
| · | Taliban hang 7 year old child (0) |
| Thursday, June 10 |
| · | Gladiator Cemetery Uncovered In York (0) |
| · | The oldest, old world leather shoe (0) |
| Saturday, May 29 |
| · | Viking Weather returns to Greenland (0) |
| · | Pagan Burial Altar Found in Israel (0) |
| Saturday, May 01 |
| · | Noah's Ark Found in Turkey (0) |
| Monday, April 12 |
| · | Mysterious patterns on met radar system (0) |
| Saturday, March 27 |
| · | "Goddess" Glacier Melting in War-Torn Kashmir (0) |
| Friday, March 12 |
| · | Nemesis (0) |
| · | Windermere's 'black hole' (0) |
| Wednesday, February 10 |
| · | First results from Large Hadron Collider published (0) |
| Friday, February 05 |
| · | Teenage Turkish Girl Buried Alive For Talking To Boys (0) |
| · | Vast "Cloud Warrior" Ruin Found in Amazon (0) |
| Tuesday, January 19 |
| · | India's Lost Nomads (0) |
| · | Lost Tribes of the Green Sahara (0) |
| Wednesday, December 16 |
| · | Jesus-era' burial shroud found (0) |
| · | Boy has Arabic script from the Koran appear on skin (0) |
| · | Viking Weapon-Recycling (0) |
| Saturday, December 12 |
| · | Decoded Ancient Tablets Shed Light on Assyrian Empire (0) |
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This is Topic: Archaeology
Following are the News Items published under this Topic.
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Packed with blackened tortoise shells, an ancient shaman's grave may be evidence of early feasting. Some 12,000 years ago in a small sunlit cave in northern Israel, mourners finished the last of the roasted tortoise meat and gathered up dozens of the blackened shells. Kneeling down beside an open grave in the cave floor, they paid their last respects to the elderly dead woman curled within, preparing her for a spiritual journey. They tucked tortoise shells under her head and hips and arranged dozens of the shells on top and around her. Then they left her many rare and magical things—the wing of a golden eagle, the pelvis of a leopard, and the severed foot of a human being. Now called Hilazon Tachtit, the small cave chosen as this woman's resting place is the subject of an intense investigation led by Leore Grosman, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. Already her research has revealed that the mystery woman—a member of the Natufian culture, which flourished between 15,000 and 11,600 years ago in what is now Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and possibly Syria—was the world's earliest known shaman. Considered a skilled sorcerer and healer, she was likely seen as a conduit to the spirit world, communicating with supernatural powers on behalf of her community, Grosman said..
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Long dismissed as accidental additions to Viking graves, prehistoric "thunderstones"—fist-size stone tools resembling the Norse god Thor's hammerhead—were actually purposely placed as good-luck talismans, archaeologists say. Using fire-starting rock such as flint, Stone Age people originally created the stones to serve as axes. But the Vikings, whose Iron Age heyday lasted from about A.D. 800 to 1050, saw the primitive tools as lightning repellent.m Because the axes predate the Viking age by thousands of years, archaeologists have long seen the stones as random artifacts, perhaps stirred up from earlier, lower burials or dropped in centuries after the Viking era. But now "we have made enough discoveries of Stone Age artifacts in younger graves to say that they make a clear pattern," archaeologist Eva Thäte, of the University of Chester in the U.K., said in a statement...
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Just northeast of Cincinnati, Ohio, a sort of wooden Stonehenge is slowly emerging as archaeologists unearth increasing evidence of a 2,000-year-old ceremonial site. Among their latest finds: Like Stonehenge, the Ohio timber circles were likely used to mark astronomical events such as the summer solstice. Formally called Moorehead Circle but nicknamed "Woodhenge" by non-archaeologists, the site was once a leafless forest of wooden posts. Laid out in a peculiar pattern of concentric, but incomplete, rings, the site is about 200 feet (57 meters) wide. Today only rock-filled postholes remain, surrounded by the enigmatic earthworks of Fort Ancient State Memorial (map). Some are thousands of feet long and all were built by Indians of the pre-agricultural Hopewell culture, the dominant culture in midwestern and eastern North America from about A.D. 1 to 900. This year archaeologists began using computer models to analyze Moorehead Circle's layout and found that Ohio's Woodhenge may have even more in common with the United Kingdom's Stonehenge than thought—specifically, an apparently intentional astronomical alignment. The software "allows us to stitch together various kinds of geographical data, including aerial photographs and excavation plans and even digital photographs," explained excavation leader Robert Riordan, an archaeologist at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. The researchers had known, for example, that an opening in the rings; a nearby, human-made enclosure; stone mounds; and a gateway in a nearby earthen wall are all aligned. But the model revealed that the alignment is such that, during the Northern Hemisphere's summer solstice—the longest day of the year—the sun appears to rise in the gateway, as seen from the center of the circle, Riordan said. In much the same way, and on the same day, the sun appears to rise alongside Stonehenge's outlying Heel Stone, casting a beam on the monument's central altar...
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Reeking of decay and packed with bowls of human fingers, a partly burned baby, and gem-studded teeth—among other artifacts—a newfound Maya king's tomb sounds like an overripe episode of Tales From the Crypt. But the tightly sealed, 1,600-year-old burial chamber, found under a jungle-covered Guatemalan pyramid, is as rich with archaeological gold as it is with oddities, say researchers who announced the discovery Friday. "This thing was like Fort Knox," said Brown University archaeologist Stephen Houston, who led the excavation in the ancient, overgrown Maya town of El Zotz. Alternating layers of flat stones and mud preserved human bones, wood carvings, textiles, and other organic material to a surprising degree—offering a rare opportunity to advance Maya archaeology, experts say. "Since [the artifacts] appear in a royal tomb, they may provide direct insights in the political economy of the divine kings that likely involved tribute and gifts," Vanderbilt University anthropologist Markus Eberl, who was not involved in the project, said via email. Excavation leader Houston added, "we're looking at a glimpse of lost art forms" ...
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The Yewden Villa at Hambleden was excavated in 1912 The Yewden Villa at Hambleden was excavated in 1912. Archaeologists investigating a mass burial of 97 infants at a Roman villa in the Thames Valley believe it may have been a brothel. Tests on the site at Hambleden in Buckinghamshire suggest all died at 40 weeks gestation, very soon after birth. Archaeologists suspect local inhabitants may have been systematically killing unwanted babies. Archaeologist Dr Jill Eyers said: "The only explanation you keep coming back to is that it's got to be a brothel". With little or no effective contraception, unwanted pregnancies could have been common at Roman brothels, explained Dr Eyers, who works for Chiltern Archaeology. And infanticide may not have been as shocking in Roman times as it is today. Archaeological records suggest infants were not considered to be "full" human beings until about the age of two, said Dr Eyers. Children any younger than that age were not buried in cemeteries. As a result, infant burials tended to be at domestic sites in the Roman era. Even so, say experts, the number at the Yewden villa at Hambleden is extraordinary. Skeletal biologist Dr Mays is investigating the remains of 97 infants found at the site. "There is no other site that would yield anything like the 97 infant burials," said Dr Simon Mays, a skeletal biologist at English Heritage's Centre for Archaeology, who has been investigating the finds...
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