Archaeology news

• Humans may be reversing the climate clock, by 50 million years

  11-12-2018 18:35
  Our future on Earth may also be our past. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that humans are reversing a long-term cooling trend tracing back at least 50 million years. And it's taken just two centuries.Epihippus gracilis, one of the many early horses found in the Hancock Mammal Quarry in Oregon, depictedaround 30 million years ago. Their ancestors would have gotten their...[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full lin
  
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• Call for port extension to be halted as genocide remains are found on Namibia’s Shark Island

  06-05-2024 14:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Researchers say more bodies of Herero and Nama people from early 20th century concentration camp could be in waters around portThe Namibian authorities are being urged to halt plans to extend a port on the Shark Island peninsula after the discovery of unmarked graves and artefacts relating to the Herero and Nama genocide.Forensic Architecture, a non-profit research agency, said it had located sites of executions, forced labour, imprisonment and sexual violence that occurred when the island was u
  
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• ‘You struggled with my film? Fantastic!’ Alice Rohrwacher and her riotous new tomb-raiding tale

  06-05-2024 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  La Chimera looks like a crime caper about looters in 1980s Italy. But it’s about way more than that. The great director, loved by everyone from Scorsese to Gerwig, talks about the dark secrets of the heart – and her debt to beesAlice Rohrwacher could be the European arthouse made flesh, or its distilled essence, bottled and preserved for the ages. She’s quoting Italian poets one minute and German poets the next. She’s discussing nature, civilisation and the power of colle
  
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• What could the Roman dodecahedron have been used for?

  05-05-2024 15:01 via theguardian.com
  
  The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical conceptsA 12-sided, 1,700-year-old object with no known purpose was found in Lincolnshire last summer and has just gone on display at Lincoln Museum. What could it have been used for? Paul Elliott, by emailPost your answers (and new questions) below or send them to [email protected]. A selection will be published next Sunday. C
  
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• Not what the textbooks usually mean by ‘manuscript illustration’

  05-05-2024 00:02 via tenthmedieval.wordpress.com
  
  Thankyou all those who have encouraged me to keep going with the blog! Plans remain afoot, but for now you can certainly have this little gem (not a lettuce) which apparently I stashed for future writing up in May 2021. It speaks to some of the blog’s oldest themes, to wit protochronism, micro-histories in administrative documents and, not least, medieval sex, and I owe it to the sharp observation of Rebecca Darley, who had she known she was going to be doing the blogging thing herself aft
  
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• Is this the answer to the Roman dodecahedron puzzle that has archaeologists stumped? | Letter

  03-05-2024 19:33 via theguardian.com
  
  Guardian readers speculate on the purpose of a mysterious object unearthed at Norton Disney, near LincolnI wonder if the object (Mysterious Roman dodecahedron to go on display in Lincoln, 29 April) could be some kind of puzzle (quite apart from being a puzzle to archaeologists). Unless some Roman puzzle book survived, it seems unlikely that a puzzle object would crop up in Roman literature. It is small enough to be held in the hand, and possibly the puzzle was to wrap a string around each protub
  
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• A villa unveiled

  03-05-2024 18:45 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  Uncovering luxury living and ‘ritual activity’ in Roman OxfordshireArchaeological work in rural Oxfordshire has uncovered the remains of a winged corridor villa that was occupied for much of the Roman period. Carly Hilts spoke to Louis Stafford to learn how the story of this long-lived, high-status residence is evolving as investigations continue.The remains of a Roman villa are being excavated on the outskirts of Grove, near Wantage in Oxfordshire. Although most of its buildings ap
  
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• Alex Hooper obituary

  03-05-2024 17:07 via theguardian.com
  
  My husband, Alex Hooper, who has died aged 82 after a long illness, had an extraordinarily varied career, including as an archaeologist, film-maker, merchant seaman, teacher and gallery curator.In the late 1960s, while doing an MA in film studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, Alex became close friends with Peter Gibson of Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts, and the pair made a documentary about the blues musician John Mayall, The Turning Point (1969). Through going on tour with Mayall, and mak
  
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• Leprosy passed between medieval squirrels and humans, study suggests

  03-05-2024 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Genetic analysis of Winchester samples shows similar strains of disease and supports theory that fur trade played role in spreadLeprosy passed between humans and red squirrels in medieval England, research suggests, supporting the theory that the fur trade could have played a role in the spread of the disease.Leprosy is one of the oldest infectious diseases recorded in humans and is typically caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘Second renaissance’: tech uncovers ancient scroll secrets of Plato and co

  03-05-2024 15:05 via theguardian.com
  
  Researchers and Silicon Valley are using tools powered by AI to read what had long been thought unreadableMore than 2,000 years after Plato died, the towering figure of classical antiquity and founder of the Academy, regarded by many as the first university in the west, can still make front-page news.Researchers this week claimed to have found the final resting place of the Greek philosopher, a patch in the garden of his Athens Academy, after scanning an ancient papyrus scroll recovered from the
  
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• Excavating the CA Archives – Wiltshire II

  03-05-2024 13:48 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  Excavating around Salisbury PlainLast month I began a tour around the final county of the UK that I had yet to visit in these pages: Wiltshire. I began in the north and headed south as far as the Vale of Pewsey. This month I will continue into what is popularly seen as the most fertile of all archaeological hunting grounds, the county’s central belt around Salisbury Plain. I will devote future columns specifically to Stonehenge and Avebury, so we will pass through these on this occasion i
  
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• Solar storms, ice cores and nuns’ teeth: the new science of history – podcast

  03-05-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Advances in fields such as spectrometry and gene sequencing are unleashing torrents of new data about the ancient world – and could offer answers to questions we never even knew to ask. By Jacob Mikanowski Continue reading...
  
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• Current Archaeology 411– ON SALE NOW

  02-05-2024 19:29 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  This month’s cover feature takes us into rural Oxfordshire, where archaeological investigations ahead of the construction of a housing estate have uncovered the remains of a previously unknown Roman villa. The site’s story is still developing, but finds already paint a picture of an elegantly appointed residence, as well as activities ranging from the agricultural to the industrial – and hints of some rather more enigmatic practices.The subject of our next feature is also unusu
  
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• Current Archaeology 411- ON SALE NOW

  02-05-2024 19:29 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  This month’s cover feature takes us into rural Oxfordshire, where archaeological investigations ahead of the construction of a housing estate have uncovered the remains of a previously unknown Roman villa. The site’s story is still developing, but finds already paint a picture of an elegantly appointed residence, as well as activities ranging from the agricultural to the industrial – and hints of some rather more enigmatic practices.The subject of our next feature is also unusu
  
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• When the milkman sparked a local panic | Brief letters

  01-05-2024 18:48 via theguardian.com
  
  Suspicious neighbours | Museum of the year | Ofsted | One word for the Tories | Roman dodecahedronArwa Mahdawi can be assured that over-suspicious neighbours are not restricted to New York (It’s not stranger danger you should be afraid of, it’s video doorbell derangement syndrome, 1 May). A local Facebook page went into meltdown about a man who was seen driving down the road in the early hours, stopping regularly and running up people’s drives, clearly looking for easy access.
  
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• Dorset auction house withdraws Egyptian human skulls from sale

  01-05-2024 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  MP says trade in remains is ‘gross violation of human dignity’, as skulls from Pitt Rivers collection removedAn auction house has withdrawn 18 ancient Egyptian human skulls from sale after an MP said selling them would perpetuate the atrocities of colonialism.Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afrikan reparations, believes the sale of human remains for any purposes should be outlawed, adding that the trade was “a gross violation of human dignit
  
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• Mary Greenacre obituary

  30-04-2024 21:33 via theguardian.com
  
  My friend Mary Greenacre, who has died aged 77, was an archaeological and museum conservator of distinction, possessing an innate empathy with fragile and precious objects.Mary specialised in ceramics, and came to understand prehistoric pottery, 18th-century terracotta sculpture and Delftware. She became conservator at the South West Area Museum Service in Bristol in 1969, where she met Francis Greenacre, curator of fine art at the City Art Gallery. They married within six months and became the
  
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• Five skeletons found under Wolf’s Lair home of Hermann Göring in Poland

  30-04-2024 18:48 via theguardian.com
  
  Amateur archaeologists discover remains missing hands and feet at former Nazi military headquartersAmateur archaeologists have unearthed five human skeletons missing their hands and feet under the former home of the Nazi war criminal Hermann Göring at Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair military headquarters in present-day Poland.The remains, believed to be that of a family, were discovered as part of a dig at the site near the north-eastern town of Kętrzyn, where Nazi leaders spent large
  
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• Mysterious Roman dodecahedron to go on display in Lincoln

  29-04-2024 12:02 via theguardian.com
  
  There are no known descriptions or drawings of object in Roman literature, making its purpose unclearThey are known as one of archaeology’s great enigmas – hollow 12-sided objects from the Roman era with no known purpose or use.Only 33 of these mysterious dodecahedrons have ever been found in Britain and now one, unearthed during an amateur archaeology dig after 1,700 years underground, is going on public display in Lincoln as part of a history festival. Continue reading...
  
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• Lost civilisations make good TV, but archaeology’s real stories hold far more wonder | Flint Dibble

  28-04-2024 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  I took on a pseudoscientist because misinformation about history too often goes unchallengedIt’s important to start strong. That’s true of a lot of things in life, but doubly so when you’re an archaeologist starting off a conversation with Graham Hancock, the famed pseudoarchaeology author, in a venue such as the Joe Rogan Experience podcast.For the last decade, scholars and experts have dealt with misinformation and pseudoscience either by trying to ignore it in order not to a
  
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• Seminar CLXXXII: John of Nikiû on persecution

  27-04-2024 09:56 via tenthmedieval.wordpress.com
  
  I promised something more substantial and so here it is, a note about a paper of late May 2021 that is, I think, still interesting stuff. Two levels of background you need: first, that what with our seminar series at the University of Leeds being forced online like everything else we did in that time of pandemic, the then-Director of the Institute of Medieval Studies, Dr Alaric Hall, took the chance to broaden our reach a bit, both in terms of nationality of speakers and of topics of discussion,
  
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• Some of what’s been going on

  26-04-2024 19:00 via tenthmedieval.wordpress.com
  
  Hullo again; we might be back on air…
  So, if you’re still reading after all this time, I want to firstly to thank you for that; thankyou all, you are my reassurance that I have some kind of an interested public at times when this is otherwise hard to determine. Secondly, I want to say something very brief by way of outline about what was behind this hiatus; and then thirdly I want to reflect, likewise briefly, on the utility of this blog. And then I want to get another post up pront
  
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• Rare lunar event to shed light on Stonehenge’s links to the moon

  15-04-2024 08:32 via theguardian.com
  
  Archaeologists and astronomers to study Wiltshire site’s lesser understood connection to the moonThe rising and setting of the sun at Stonehenge, especially during the summer and winter solstices, continues to evoke joy, fascination and religious devotion.Now a project has been launched to delve into the lesser understood links that may exist between the monument and the moon during a rare lunar event. Continue reading...
  
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• ‘It’s plain elitist’: anger at Greek plan for €5,000 private tours of Acropolis

  15-04-2024 06:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Archaeologists and guides among critics who say scheme goes against what symbol of democracy should representJackie and Malcolm Love stood amid a bevy of tourists in the heart of Athens taking in the Acropolis with a mixture of awe and admiration. The Greek capital’s greatest classical site was truly magnificent, they said, but the crowds had been such, even in April, that they preferred to experience it from a distance.“We didn’t go, not with all those people,” said Jack
  
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• Banquet room with preserved frescoes unearthed among Pompeii ruins

  11-04-2024 17:10 via theguardian.com
  
  ‘Black room’ with frescoes inspired by Trojan war described as one of most striking discoveries ever made at site in southern ItalyA banquet room replete with well preserved frescoes depicting characters inspired by the Trojan war has been unearthed among the ruins of Pompeii in what has been described as one of the most striking discoveries ever made at the southern Italy archaeological site.The 15-metre-long, six-metre-wide room was found in a former private residence in Via di Nol
  
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• Great Barrier Reef discovery overturns belief Aboriginal Australians did not make pottery, archaeologists say

  09-04-2024 22:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Paper dates 82 pottery pieces found in single dig site at between 3,000 and 2,000 years oldFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcastGroundbreaking archaeological research may have upended the longstanding belief that Aboriginal Australians did not make pottery.A paper published in the Quaternary Science Reviews on Wednesday details the finding of 82 pottery pieces from a single dig site on a Great Barrier Reef
  
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• Christie’s withdraws Greek vases from auction over links to convicted dealer

  09-04-2024 19:05 via theguardian.com
  
  Exclusive: four vases in New York auction traced to Gianfranco Becchina, convicted in 2011 of illegally dealing in antiquitiesChristie’s has withdrawn four ancient Greek vases from Tuesday’s auction after a leading archaeologist discovered that each of them was linked to a convicted antiquities dealer.Dr Christos Tsirogiannis, an affiliated archaeology lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a specialist in looted antiquities and trafficking networks, told the Guardian that there
  
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• Silver coin boom in medieval England due to melted down Byzantine treasures, study reveals

  09-04-2024 01:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Chemical analysis reveals origin of coinage that stimulated trade and helped fuel development of new towns from seventh centurySeveral decades after the Sutton Hoo burial, starting in about AD660, there was a sudden rise in the number of silver coins in circulation in England, for reasons that have long puzzled archaeologists and historians.The new rush of silver coinage stimulated trade and helped fuel the development of the new towns springing up at the time – but where did it come from?
  
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• Stephen Mitchell obituary

  07-04-2024 18:18 via theguardian.com
  
  My brother Stephen Mitchell, who has died aged 75, was a historian, archaeological surveyor and interpreter of inscriptions of the Hellenistic, Roman and early Byzantine periods, particularly in what is now Turkey. Equally at home on a hillside as in a lecture theatre, he once discovered three lost cities of the Pisidian people, high in Anatolia’s Taurus mountains, in a single fortnight.Stephen joined the department of classics at Swansea University in 1976, gaining a professorship in 1993
  
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• Romans, royal ships, and a rural retreat

  04-04-2024 10:00 via archaeology.co.uk
  
  Exploring the archaeology of Smallhythe PlaceSmallhythe Place is a timber- framed house set in an intriguing archaeological landscape. For the last three years, archaeologists have been exploring its surroundings; this team photo was taken in 2023. PHOTO: National Trust/Nathalie Cohen
  Smallhythe Place, a National Trust property in Kent, is home to a picturesque timber-framed house with enigmatic origins, while the surrounding landscape preserves unique traces of a medieval shipbuilding centre t
  
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