Discovery News

Ancient Thames burial site found

archaeology#topic

An archaeological discovery which could be a prehistoric burial area has been found at the site of a former hospital.

Three large "ring ditches" have been unearthed, which may have been used to bury important Bronze Age chiefs.

Traces of a later 6th-century Saxon settlement have also been discovered following excavation by the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) at the former Radcliffe Infirmary in the centre of Oxford.

Civilization Collapsed After Cutting Key Trees

archaeology

Nov. 2, 2009 -- The ancient Nazca people, who once flourished in the valleys of south coastal Peru, literally fell with the trees they chopped down, new research has concluded.

The Nazca caused their own collapse when they cleared their forests in order to make way for agriculture, thus exposing the landscape to wind and flood erosion, according to a study published in the journal Latin American Antiquity.

Best known for carving hundreds of geometric lines and images of animals and birds in the Peruvian desert that are fully visible from the air, the Nazca flourished between the first century B.C. and the fifth century A.D.

Body Part Mummified With Ancient Egyptian Recipe

archaeology

Oct. 15, 2009 - Swiss researchers have succeeded in mummifying a body part using the salty recipe of the ancient Egyptians.

One of the goals of the project is to find out how much the mummification process damages the DNA.

The experiment, which has been running for more than four months, takes inspiration from a 1994 study by Ronald Wade, director of Maryland's State Anatomical Board, and Bob Brier, one of the leading experts on mummies and Egyptology.

Stolen Egyptian Relics On Their Way Home

archaeology

Oct. 9, 2009 - France decided on Friday to return to Egypt five relics stolen from Luxor's Valley of the Kings and sold to the Louvre, two days after Cairo severed ties with the Paris museum in protest.

A special commission of the French museums agency decided unanimously to hand over the five painted wall fragments after ruling that they were indeed stolen in the 1980s before ending up at the Louvre in 2000 and 2003.

"Restitution is now just a matter of weeks," said a culture ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

'Mini-Colosseum' Excavated in Rome

archaeology

Oct. 2, 2009 -- Beneath Rome's Fiumicino airport lies a "mini-Colosseum" that may have played host to Roman emperors, according to British archaeologists.

The foundations of the amphitheater, which are oval-shaped like the much larger arena in the heart of Rome, have been unearthed at the site of Portus, a 2nd century A.D. harbor near Ostia's port on the Tiber River.

A monumental seaport that saved imperial Rome from starvation, Portus is now reduced to a large hexagonal pond on a marshy land owned by a noble family, the Duke Sforza Cesarinis.

Roman Statues Found in Blue Grotto Cave

archaeology

Sept. 28, 2009 - A number of ancient Roman statues might lie beneath the turquoise waters of the Blue Grotto on the island of Capri in southern Italy, according to an underwater survey of the sea cave.

Dating to the 1st century A.D., the cave was used as a swimming pool by the Emperor Tiberius (42 B.C. - 37 A.D.), and the statues are probably depictions of sea gods.

"A preliminary underwater investigation has revealed several statue bases which might possibly hint to sculptures lying nearby," Rosalba Giugni, president of the environmentalist association, Marevivo, told Discovery News.

Gold hoard 'worth seven-figure sum'

archaeology#topic

Experts believe that the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold ever found in Britain is worth a "seven-figure sum".

Metal detector enthusiast Terry Herbert, 55, came across the cache buried in a field in south Staffordshire in July.

Consisting of at least 1,345 items made of gold and silver, it has been termed "a fantastically important discovery" and officially declared treasure. A panel of experts is due to value the hoard.

Oldest Fibers Date Back to Stone Age

archaeology

Sept. 11, 2009 -- In the Stone Age, advances in fiber technology globalized people not communication. As early as 32,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers figured out how to transform wild flax fibers into cords suitable for sewing clothes, weaving baskets and attaching stone tools to handles, researchers report in the Sept. 11 Science.

Their excavations at a western Asian cave have yielded the oldest known fragments of twine.

Following the ancient invention of cord-making techniques, human groups were able to create warm, durable clothes and other gear needed for trekking into Siberia and across a now-submerged land bridge to North America, proposes Harvard University archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef, a coauthor of the new study.

Easter Island Red Hat Mystery Revealed

archaeology

Sept. 8, 2009 -- British archaeologists said they believe they have solved the ancient mystery of how the giant stone statues on Easter Island acquired distinctive red hats.

The researchers said the key to the mystery lies in their discovery of a road on the tiny Pacific island.

The hats were built in a quarry hidden inside the crater of an ancient volcano, and then rolled by hand or on tree logs to the site of the statues, said the team from the University of Manchester and University College, London.

Colossal Apollo Statue Unearthed in Turkey

archaeology

Sept. 8, 2009 -- A colossal statue of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, light, music and poetry, has emerged from white calcified cliffs in southwestern Turkey, Italian archaeologists announced.

Colossal statues were very popular in antiquity, as evidenced by the lost giant statues of the Colossus of Rhodes and the Colossus of Nero. Most of them vanished long ago -- their material re-used in other building projects.

"This colossal statue of Apollo is really a unique finding. Such statues are extremely rare in Asia Minor. Only a dozen still survive," team leader Francesco D'Andria, director of the Institute of Archaeological Heritage, Monuments and Sites at Italy's National Research Council in Lecce, told Discovery News.