Stone Pages Archaeo News: September 2009 Archives

September 2009 index:

5 September 2009: £150,000 for the Wiltshire Heritage Museum; Grants for construction and refurbishment work at 34 museums throughout the UK have been announced by culture minister Barbara Follett. The £4m grants include £150,000 for the Wiltshire Heritage Museum...
: Iron Age remains uncovered at North Wales dig; An archaeological dig in North Wales has unearthed Iron Age remains thought to be about 3,000 years old. The excavation, by Bangor University's School of History and Denbighshire and Flintshire's...
: Cavern dig in England uncovers 15,000-year-old weapon; Archaeologists digging at Kents Cavern (Devon England) have found a 15,000-year-old weapon carved from a reindeer antler. The rare sagaie, or javelin point, was crafted by a stone age inhabitant...
: Scottish Bronze Age boat proves a handful for volunteers; The Bronze Age lived on at Loch Tay (Perthshire, Scotland), as a replica of a 3000-year-old logboat successfully completed its maiden voyage. A team of more than 30 volunteers worked...
: Port threat to Irish passage tombs; An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland, has warned that the proposed deepwater port at Bremore, north Co Dublin, could threaten an archaeological complex of passage tombs even older than...
: Iron Age history day on North Yorks Moors; Visitors to the North York Moors National Park (England) can travel back in time to the Iron Age on a special themed weekend. The national park has several important Iron...
: Europe's oldest axes discovered; Archaeologists have long been puzzled by a 1-million-year pause between when early humans started making sophisticated hand axes with two-faced blades in Africa 1.5 million years ago and when the...
: 3,700-year-old fortification uncovered in Israel; Israeli archaeologists say they have uncovered the oldest example of massive fortifications ever found in Jerusalem. The Israel Antiquities Authority says the 3,700-year-old wall was built by the ancient Canaanites...
: Europe's first farmers replaced their forerunners; Analysis of ancient DNA from skeletons suggests that Europe's first farmers were not the descendants of the people who settled the area after the retreat of the ice sheets. Instead,...
: Dogs first tamed in China - To be food?; Wolves were domesticated no more than 16,300 years ago in southern China, a new genetic analysis suggests—and it's possible the canines were tamed to be livestock, not pets, the study...
: Rock shelter yields rare proof of early Ohioans; More than 10,000 years ago, an ice-age hunter likely stopped to change a broken spear point beneath a rock overhang in what is now northwestern Coshocton County (Ohio, USA). A...
12 September 2009: Fairy tales have ancient origin; A study by anthropologists has explored the origins of folk tales and traced the relationship between varients of the stories recounted by cultures around the world. The researchers adopted techniques...
: Ancient site in Guernsey could be fenced off; An ancient monument in Guernsey could be fenced off because of repeated anti-social behaviour. The Culture and Leisure Department has applied for planning permission to put up a fence around...
: Destruction at archaeological sites following Dakar Rally; Irreversible damage to a number of important archaeological sites in Chile and Argentina has been caused by the Dakar Rally, an annual off-road automobile race held in South America for...
: Cumbrian museum acquires Bronze Age treasure; A rare early Bronze Age find - the first of its type in the UK for 100 years - has been acquired by Tullie House Museum in Carlisle (Cumbria, England)....
: Fossil find in Georgia challenges theories on early humans; The conventional view of human evolution and how early man colonised the world has been thrown into doubt by a series of stunning palaeontological discoveries suggesting that Africa was not...
: Excavations report from Cyprus; The Cypriot Department of Antiquities announced the completion of the 2009 Prastion-Mesorotsos project that took place from 22 June to 30 July, and involved investigation of the stratified remains of...
: Ancient Peruvian remains uncovered; A joint Japanese-Peruvian archeological mission has uncovered the remains of a pre-Incan woman sacrificed more than 2,000 years ago in the Andean nation. "The bones were discovered in a fetal...
: Stone figurine unearthed at Çatalhöyük; A reclining man with a bushy beard and big nose is the latest to join a haul of stone figurines unearthed at the ancient site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey. The...
: Giant stone-age axes found in African lake basin; A giant African lake basin is providing information about possible migration routes and hunting practices of early humans in the Mesolithic and Neolithic, between 150,000 and 10,000 years ago. Oxford...
: Oldest-known fiber materials discovered in Georgia; A team of archaeologists and paleobiologists has discovered flax fibers that are more than 34,000 years old, making them the oldest fibers known to have been used by humans. The...
: Also women were cave painters; Cave art seems always to have been thought of, for no especially good reason, as the work of men. Perhaps it is because much of the art lies in deep,...
: Iron Age roundhouse unearthed at Scottish farm; Archaeologists have uncovered the floor and timber beams of a 2,000-year-old roundhouse in the heart of a Moray farm (scotland). Experts believe the structure unearthed at Dykeside Farm, Birnie, was...
: Stonehenge visitor centre looks 'cheap and nasty'; Denton Corker Marshall's designs for a £25 million Stonehenge visitor centre have been compared to an 'immigration detention centre', just weeks before the planning application is due to be submitted....
19 September 2009: Archaeologists fight to get back Neolithic Indian artifacts; Archaeological findings dating back about 3,000 years discovered in the Kalady area (India) are in peril. The Neolithic findings have ended up in private custody, prompting the State Archaeology Department...
: Caterthuns hillforts are part of a single entity; Visitors to two Iron Age monuments in Angus (Scotland) at the weekend had the rare opportunity of taking a guided walk of the sites. The tour of the Brown and...
: British monuments part of an ancient navigational aid?; According to a new theory, prehistoric man found his way across England using a navigation system based on stone circles and other markers. The complex network of stones, hill forts...
: Controversial motorway in Ireland is 90% complete; The controversial M3 motorway in Co Meath (Ireland), which has been the subject of several years of protests, is now almost 90 per cent complete, the National Roads Authority (NRA)...
: Huge cult complex unearthed in Bulgaria; A team led by Bulgarian archaeologist Prof. Nikolay Ovcharov has uncovered an enormous cult complex at the ancient Thracian city of Perperikon in the Rhodope Mountains, 15 km northeast of...
: Iron Age remains found at port site in Essex; Ancient remains have been unearthed as part of the £1.5billion port project in Stanford-le-Hope (Essex, England). A team of 40 archaeologists have discovered a salt extraction site dating back 2,000...
: Excavation on Iron Age hilllort in Cheshire; Habitats and Hillforts team members have carried out an archaeological sample excavation on the Iron Age hill fort above Frodsham (Cheshire, England) known as Woodhouse Hill. The aim was to...
: Rice existed 4,000 years ago in Yangtze basin; New findings indicate that farming in the Yangtze Basin (China) existed as early as 4,000 years ago. Excavation in the Xiezi Area of Hubei Province yielded a total of 402...
: Orcadian carving may represent human eyes and eyebrows; A remote Neolithic burial mound on an Orkney island (Scotland) may contain carvings of human eyes and eyebrows, it has been revealed. The stone is inside the Holm of Papa...
: 4,500-year-old arrowhead found in Burren excavation; Archaeologists have discovered evidence of what could be the oldest habitation site in the Burren (County Clare, Ireland) dating back 4,500 years at Caherconnell. Director of the dig, Graham Hull...
: Bronze Age festival at Maiden Castle; A Bronze Age house is to be built at Maiden Castle (Dorset, England) as part of a 'living history' weekend. Visitors will have their chance to try their hand at...
: 'Whicker Man' tomb to yield Bronze Age secrets; Human remains uncovered at a burial site in the Highlands of Scotland are extremely rare and could provide new information about Bronze Age life, experts say. The site was discovered...
: Orkney dig gives clear picture of life in Neolithic Britain; Archaeologists working in Orkney (Scotland) have pieced together the most complete picture to date of life in Neolithic Britain. Excavation of a settlement on the island of Westray points to...
26 September 2009: Lectures by the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society; Two lectures about prehistory will be held next October at the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society. 'Keeping Up Appearances' by Ben Roberts, is about prehistoric jewellery in Britain and...
: Digs show ancient Indians took refuge beneath rock overhangs; Jeff Dilyard squatted in a waist-deep pit beneath a rock overhang, contemplating a dark patch of sand he uncovered. Perhaps it's the remnants of a campfire an Indian hunting party...
: The Loveland Stone Age Fair; The Loveland Stone Age Fair (Colorado, USA) next weekend celebrates its 75th anniversary, a number that pales in comparison with 13,200 years the age of its oldest artifacts. Everything on...
: Dolmen with petroglyphs found in India; A big dolmen with four petroglyphs that portray men with tridents and a wheel with spokes has been found at Kollur, near Tirukoilur, 35 km from Villupuram in the Indian...
: 3,300-year-old site discovered in Sri Lanka; An archaeological site more than 3330 years old has been found in the Udaranchamadama area in Embilipitiya (Sri Lanka), by a group of local archaeologists. The site had been discovered...
: Fridgehenge; Organic Milk Co-operative has unveiled its own monument in homage to the autumnal equinox. Fridgehenge was revealed at 5.53am on Tuesday 22 September at Encie Farm, Somerset (England), just off...
: Human ancestors conflicted on monogamy; When it comes to love, we Homo sapiens are a peculiar breed: We thrill at the thought of torrid affairs while dreaming about the perfect someone with whom we can...
: Scandinavians are descended from Stone Age immigrants; Today's Scandinavians are not descended from the people who came to Scandinavia at the conclusion of the last Ice Age but, apparently, from a population that arrived later, concurrently with...
: New archaeological sites discovered on Exmoor; More than 2,200 previously unknown archaeological sites have been discovered on Exmoor (England). And significant new information has been added to a further 800 sites, thanks to painstaking research over...
: Prehistoric dugong worship site discovered in UAE; French archaeologists have discovered the oldest known place of worship dedicated to the dugong, or sea cow, on an island just north of Dubai. The sanctuary believed to date back...
: Dayschool - Neolithic and Bronze Age Yorkshire: Recent Work; A day meeting to mark Terry Manby's contribution to Yorkshire Prehistoric Studies will be held at Helmsley Arts Centre, Helmsley (North Yorkshire, England). Organised and supported by the North York...
: Scottish town puts its past on display; Some of the significant events in an Angus town's history, including its involvement in two wars, are being recalled to mark Scottish Archaeology Month. Montrose Museum has mounted a timeline...
: Funding crisis could cost Flag Fen its future; A funding crisis has put the future of one Peterborough's major heritage attractions in jeopardy. Flag Fen Archaeology Park, one of Europe's most important Bronze Age sites, located in England,...
: 5,000-year-old Venus figure found in Turkey; A 5,000-year-old Venus figure has been found as part of an excavation being carried out in Çanakkale's Ezine district. The excavation began in the field three weeks ago in cooperation...