Stone Pages Archaeo News: March 2004 Archives

March 2004 index:

1 March 2004: Prehistoric musical instruments found in Vietnam; Prehistoric Vietnamese people possibly lived in the southern Central Highlands, archaeologists said, after discovering a collection of stone artifacts in Lam Dong province. The evidence on which archaeologists made the...
: Nine Ladies under threat; The Nine Ladies stone circle at Stanton Lees, Derbyshire (England) is threatened by plans to extract 3.2 million tons of millstone grit from just 100m away. The company, Stancliffe Stone,...
: Lake-dwellers revisited; In 2004 around 20 Swiss museums will hold exhibitions dedicated to the first discovery of lake-dwelling peoples on the shore of Lake Zurich – a discovery that gave Europeans new...
3 March 2004: A new first chapter in the history of medicine; An art historian and a medical historian are proposing a new date for the first known use of medicine. Their argument is based on frescoes on the Aegean island of...
: Consultation group for Thornborough Henges; North Yorkshire County Council has set up a consultation group to look at the future of Thornborough Henges near Ripon (England), one of Britain’s most important archaeological areas. The group...
: New archaeological website for Somerset; Somerset County Council is launching a website which lists all archaeological sites in the county, from pill boxes to Stone Age sites. The site will be launched at two demonstrations...
4 March 2004: The ancient inhabitants of Pasco County, Florida; Pasco County in the state of Florida, USA, has a rich history of ancient habitation. The first people arrived around 10,000 BCE in pursuit of mammoth and mastodon. Over the...
: Ancient Chinese settlement goes on display; The site of the earliest and largest city of the Shu people in China's south-western province of Sichuan is to be opened as a tourist attraction. Located near present-day Guanghan...
5 March 2004: Bronze Age treasure found in Wales; An "exceptional" hoard of buried treasure has been found in Wrexham (North Wales) just two years after another major find of Bronze Age treasure there. The 14 pieces of priceless...
: Britain’s oldest continuously inhabited village; Dreghorn in Ayrshire, Scotland, has been revealed as Britain's oldest continuously inhabited village after the remains of an ancient settlement were uncovered by builders. North Ayrshire Council granted permission for...
6 March 2004: Druid community calls for a new shrine at Stonehenge; Druid leaders called for the creation of a sacred site at Stonehenge for the re-burial of human remains unearthed during a unique road project in the area. They want a...
: Researchers uncover giant depiction of ancient warrior; Two researchers have claimed that a huge, human-like depiction present in the road system straddling Meath and Louth (Ireland) could be the world’s largest ground-based representation of the constellation of...
8 March 2004: Farm ploughing threatens Thornborough henges; Experts say the immediate threat to archaeology around the 5,500-year-old Thornborough Henges in North Yorkshire (England) is not an expansion of sand and gravel quarrying but the annual ploughing of...
: Bronze Age conservation project celebrates completion; A four-year project to save more than 100 Bronze Age ceramic pots has now been completed. The celebration to mark the end of Wiltshire County Council-led project will be held...
9 March 2004: Discovery of Dilmun civilisation to be celebrated; Bahrain is planning to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the ancient Dilmun civilisation by Danish archaeologists. A five day event at the end of the year, under...
: Ancient Iraqi carving goes on tour of UK museums; A 4,000-year-old Iraqi relief carving of a Babylonian goddess is to go on a tour of UK museums. The Queen of the Night, dated to between 1800 and 1750 BCE,...
14 March 2004: 3,000-year-old painted pot unearthed in China; An ancient earthen pot with an ostrich design painted on the body, the first of its kind ever discovered in China, has been unearthed in Linyao City, western China's Gansu...
: 'Archaeo-Astronomical sites and observatories' meeting in Venice; Last November, the new UNESCO World Heritage Thematic Programme 'Archaeo-Astronomical Sites and Observatories', was officially announced by Anna Sidorenko, WHC Assistant Programme Specialist, who is responsible for this Programme, in...
: Hoard adds weight to Northeastern Welsh museum bid; Calls for a national museum for north east Wales have intensified following the find of an "exceptional" hoard of Bronze Age treasure in Wrexham (see the article we published on...
: Rare axe head found and reburied in Scotland; A Fife man who discovered a rare Neolithic axe head while out walking near his home is facing prosecution for refusing to hand it over. Under Scots Law such finds...
: Inhabitants in Iranian Burnt City were engaged in making ornaments; An archaeologist of Zabol University in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan said the inhabitants of the Burnt City in ancient times had made ornaments to earn their living. "Inhabitants...
: Prehistoric axe found in a garden in Somerset; A 5,000-year-old flint axe head has been found in a garden in Somerset (England). Andrew Witts made the rare prehistoric discovery while landscaping his garden at Creech St Michael near...
17 March 2004: Urn-burials at Adichanallur; 100 years after an urn-burial site was first excavated by an amateur British archaeologist the Archaeological Survey of India [ASI] has resumed digging at Adichanallur in Tamil Nadu. To date,...
: 4,000-year-old skeleton in Tierra del Fuego; Anthropologists and geologists from the Austral Scientific Research Centre have discovered the body of an adult who lived on the north coast of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) 4,000 years ago....
: Ancient Aboriginal rock art defaced; Ancient Aboriginal rock art at Ubirr in Kakadu (Australia) - believed to be up to 25,000 years old - has been defaced by visitors. National Parks director Peter Cochrane said...
18 March 2004: Prehistoric jasper mine unearthed in Virginia; In the course of an archaeological assessment prior to the widening of Route 3, east of Culpeper (Virginia, USA), researchers discovered a significant find. A large cache of jasper shards...
: Neolithic carvings found in Sicily; Italian archaeologists have found a series of huge human and animal figures carved on a rocky wall at Petralia Sottana, above the Vecchiuzzo cave, one of the most important Neolithic...
: Bronze Age grinder identified after 9 years; Just a few months after neolithic round houses were found on the site of a housing development on the outskirts of Forres (Moray, Scotland), a man living has unearthed more...
20 March 2004: Ancient Indians made 'rock music'; Archaeologists have rediscovered a huge rock art site in southern India where ancient people used boulders to make musical sounds in rituals. The Kupgal Hill site includes rocks with unusual...
21 March 2004: Archaeologists: the tunnel under Stonehenge is inadequate; Archaeologists have branded the government's £200m plans for a 2.1km tunnel under Stonehenge "inadequate", claiming it would bring "irreversible damage to the World Heritage site". The National Trust has objected...
24 March 2004: Ice Age deposits below pub car park; A group of cavers from the Bristol Exploration Club have told how they discovered a vast network of caverns containing Ice Age remains when they agreed to help clear a...
: Mixed human and animal ashes give insights into Bronze Age; The 4000-year-old cremated remains of a young man have provided fresh insights into the superstitious bonds between farmers and their animals in Bronze Age society. A burial urn discovered by...
25 March 2004: Kist unearthed while ploughing in Orkney; An Orcadian farmer has unearthed on his land at Howe Farm in Harray (Orkney, Scotland) what is believed to be a Bronze Age burial kist. Despite kists being quite common...
: 4,000 year-old city excavated in Central China; Archaeologists have confirmed that the Dashigu cultural relics of the Xia Dynasty (21-16th century BCE) in the suburb of Zhengzhou, capital of Central China's Henan Province, date to a large...
: 4x4s banned from Ridgeway in Winter; Drivers of 4X4 vehicles are to be banned from using parts of Britain’s oldest known road this winter. Quadbikes, trail bikes and off-road cars will face a seasonal ban from...
: Finds spanning 5,000 years in China; Archaeologists claim that cultural relics they discovered in Yunyang county, southwestern China's Chongqing municipality, cover each culture of a 5,000-year period with distinct cultural stratums. "We discovered human traces of...
27 March 2004: Students to search for lost Sicilian city; College students in Professor Michael Kolb's archeology course this summer face a single assignment - digging through a hilltop for a lost city. In May, the Northern Illinois University professor...
: 7,400-year-old jar gives clue to phoenix-worshipping myth; A 7,400-year-old pottery jar stamped with the design of two flying phoenixes has been excavated recently in central China's Hunan Province, helping archaeologists unveil the secret of the "birth" of...
: First Temple relic may be forged; Investigators for the Israel Antiquities Authority have been informed that a precious Ivory Pomegranate, on display at the Israel Museum since 1988, is a forgery. On the basis of an...
: Stonehenge tunnel could have effects at Avebury; Following on from archaeologists' concerns that the proposed 2.1km tunnel under Stonehenge would be inadequate, representatives of the Avebury Society believe the existing scheme also overlooks a significant portion of...
: Cave art to go on show; The only known Ice Age cave art in Britain is to be revealed to the public for the first time. But the tours, to be held for just two weeks...
: Re-writing ancient history of the Upper Tweed Valley; The archaeological survey of the Upper Tweed Valley (Scotland) has finally been completed by the Biggar Museum Trust. Over three years, the archaeologists have been checking out every nook and...
: Ancient statue found on Chios; Archaeologists on the island of Chios (Greece) have discovered a rare life-sized marble statue of a youth dating to the mid-sixth century BCE. The statue, of a type known as...
: New survey of Northern Ireland's monuments; The state of Northern Ireland's historical monuments are to come under the spotlight in a new survey. The two-year study by archaeologists from Queen's University's Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork is...
: Neolithic relics uncovered in Cambridgeshire; Relics dating back 6,000 years to the Neolithic age are being uncovered by archaeologists working on the site of the Fordham bypass (Cambridgeshire, England). A team from Cambridgeshire County Council's...
: 8,500-year-old axe found in Portsmouth; Jamie Stevenson was walking with his dog along Portsmouth beach (Hampshire, England) when he stumbled across an axe head dating back to the stone age. The discoverer said: "My dog...
30 March 2004: Dolphin fishing site discovered; Archaeologists have unearthed bones that show that dolphins were being fished for between 6500 BCE and 7500 BCE off the coast of what is now the Chiba Prefecture (Japan). The...
: Mesolithic flints found on Cairngorms; More than 80 pieces of worked flint and quartz prove that early settlers travelled through the Cairngorm landscape 7,000 years ago, according to archaeologists. The find, in Glen Dee near...
31 March 2004: Ancient human remains reveal a bloody end; University of Leicester archaeologists discovered the earliest human remains from Leicestershire (England). Analysis of the remains found eight years ago in a gravel quarry near Watermead Country Park, Birstallhas, established...