Archaeology news

• Flood-Damaged Books Frozen in Italy

  26-05-2023 06:01 via archaeology.org
  BOLOGNA, ITALY—The Guardian reports that ancient books and manuscripts damaged by recent deadly flooding in northern Italy’s region of Emilia-Romagna are being stored in industrial freezers provided by a frozen food company. So far, books have been salvaged by volunteers and the carabinieri of the Cultural Heritage Protection Unit of Bologna from the basement of a seminary in Cava, the Trisi Library in Lugo, and the archives of the Forlì town hall. Freezing could draw water ou
  
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• Risk of Flintknapping Injury Tabulated

  26-05-2023 05:42 via archaeology.org
  KENT, OHIO—According to a statement released by Kent State University, the process of breaking, flaking, and shaping stones to create tools may have been a life-threatening undertaking for early humans. Metin I. Eren of Kent State University and Stephen Lycett of the University of Buffalo and their colleagues, Nicholas Gala and Michelle Bebber, surveyed 173 modern flintknappers, and determined that knapping is more dangerous than they had realized from their own experiences. The reported i
  
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• Medieval Settlement Mapped in Northern Germany’s Mudflats

  26-05-2023 05:17 via archaeology.org
  MAINZ, GERMANY—According to a statement released by Mainz University, traces of a large church have been found at Rungholt, a medieval trading center located on Germany’s northern coast that was submerged by storm surge in 1362. Research team member Dennis Wilken of Kiel University said that magnetic gradiometry, electromagnetic induction, and seismics were used to map the settlement’s remains, which are now hidden by mudflats in the UNESCO Wadden Sea World Heritage Site. Sedim
  
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• 2,700-Year-Old Saddle Found in China

  26-05-2023 04:47 via archaeology.org
  YANGHAI, CHINA—A leather saddle dated to between 700 and 400 B.C. has been recovered from a woman’s grave in the arid desert of northwestern China’s Turpan Basin, according to a Live Science report. Saddles for horseback riding are thought to have originated in Central Asia around the middle of the first millennium B.C. “This places the Yanghai saddle at the beginning of the history of saddle making,” said Patrick Wertmann of the University of Zurich. The woman is t
  
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