Stone Pages Archaeo News: July 2011 Archives

July 2011 index:

1 July 2011: Prehistoric settlement on the St Kilda archipelago; Located 65km off the western coast of the Outer Hebrides, in Scotland, the St Kilda archipelago is the remotest part of the British Isles. A team comprising the Royal Commission...
4 July 2011: Breeding with Neanderthals helped humans go global; Until Peter Parham from Stanford University (California, USA) took a closer look at human genes, it was not known whether interbreeding with hominins made any difference to human evolution. The...
: Late Bronze Age fortress uncovered in Cyprus; Recent findings suggest that an ancient Cypriot city was well protected from outside threats. Gisela Walberg, professor of Aegean prehistory in the department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati,...
6 July 2011: Iceman died after a hasty meal; Over 20 years ago the mummified body of an iceman, nicknamed Oetzi, was discovered in the ice fields in the Italian Alps. The mummified remains were dated at approximately 3,300...
: New excavations at Burrough Hill; The University of Leicester's School of Archaeology and Ancient History, together with ULAS, welcomed the public to view their latest fieldwork at an open day on 26 June 2011, at...
: One of the earliest BBQs; One of the earliest barbecues (5,700 BCE) has been found on the banks of the River Tjonger, in the Netherlands. There appears to have been quite a feast, with the...
8 July 2011: Over 7,000 years of human activity in Yorkshire; The findings from a 17 year fieldwork study at Nosterfield Quarry, near Ripon in Yorkshire (England), have just been published. In 1992 Tarmac Northern - a construction company - were...
9 July 2011: Black Sea's ancient coast found; Scientists have found the ancient shores of the Black Sea, currently deep beneath the waves, which they claim were the original shores about 7500 years ago, when the Black Sea...
: 8,000-year-old dog tomb discovered in Portugal; Archaeologists have discovered an unprecedented 8,000-year-old dog tomb - the oldest in southern Europe - in a shell mound near the Portuguese town of Alcaçer do Sal. Project co-director Mariana...
10 July 2011: Dig in Maryland continues to yield ancient artefacts; The archaeological dig at Pig Point, Maryland (USA), has continued to yield incredible artefacts and other evidence of human activity since its initial discovery in 2009. Findings include evidence of...
: 3,000-year-old artefacts unearthed in Vietnam; Artefacts from 1000 BCE have been unearthed at a mountainous site in the central province of Quang Ngai, Vietnam. Researcher Doan Ngoc Khoi from Quang Ngai Museum said 10 tombs...
: Earliest Europeans were cannibals and wore mammoth jewellery; After studying human remains and artefacts discovered at a shelter-cave site called Buran-Kaya III in Ukraine, scientists say the earliest known modern humans from southeast Europe wore shell and mammoth...
: Archeological findings reveal central African history; In late May, scores of researchers from around the world converged on the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde, for the International Conference on Rescue Archeology. At the meeting, archaeologists introduced the new...
: Northumberland rock art mobile project; Researchers at Newcastle University have developed a web site designed to help people discover the rich variety of prehistoric rock art in Northumberland (England). Archaeologists have worked side-by-side with digital...
: Excavations in Lebanon yield 5,000-year-old antiquities; Excavations at the Frères' archaeological site in the old city of Sidon (Lebanon), led by Claude Doumit Serhal from the British Museum, are now in their 13th year. Recently scientists...
11 July 2011: Texan students helping to discover prehistoric nomad history; Texas State University students have been instrumental in helping to discover the everyday life of prehistoric nomadic tribes of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, Texas, USA. For a month, the students...
: Ancient burials may shed light on prehistoric Norfolk; A female skeleton unearthed last summer in the chalk downs at Sedgeford, Norfolk (England), has been dated to 4,500 years old. The woman, aged approximately 35-45 years old, was found...
14 July 2011: Arizona petroglyphs offer glimpse into the past; For thousands of years, petroglyphs have preserved the hopes, dreams and desires of ancient cultures in the rocks and sediments around Yuma County. The images are carved or pecked into...
: Dancing shaman carved on ancient Japanese pottery; A carving of a dancing shaman has been found on an ancient pottery shard unearthed years ago at an archaeological site in Aomori, making it possibly the oldest depiction of...
: British schoolboy discovers 4,000-year-old arrowhead; An eight-year-old in Letchworth (Hertfordshire, England) digging during playtime at the town's St Christopher School came across the 4.5cm arrowhead just below the surface of a mound of soil dug...
15 July 2011: Ancient human remains found at broch site; Human remains including parts of a skull and leg bones have been found during an archaeological dig at an Iron Age site in Caithness (Scotland). The police and procurator fiscal...
16 July 2011: 25,000-year-old bones discovered in Colorado; On March 1, 2011, David Hammel had no idea he would be discovering a major archaeological site of vital interest to the San Luis Valley of Colorado (USA). Hammel was...
: Tracing back the history of human evolution at Mungo; A project is currently underway at Lake Mungo, Australia, one of the oldest places outside of Africa to have been occupied by modern humans, to research the history of human...
17 July 2011: 5,000-year-old skeleton unearthed in Northern Italy; The 5,000-year-old skeleton of a woman was recently found in Aosta Valley (Northern Italy). "The Lady of Introd", as it has been nicknamed, was in perfect conditions, but the archaeologists...
18 July 2011: Dig starts at Bronze Age roundhouse on Dartmoor; A team of archaeologists are to start excavating a Bronze Age roundhouse on Dartmoor (south Devon, England). The dig in Bellever will explore the entrance and exterior of the home....
19 July 2011: Ethiopian lake sediments reveal history of African droughts; A new survey of Lake Tana in Ethiopia - the source of the Blue Nile - suggests that drought may have contributed to the demise of the ancient Egyptian 'Old...
: Prehistoric Indian relics discovered during oil spill cleanup; Cleanup after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has turned up dozens of sites on the Caminada Headland, south of New Orleans, where archaeologists are finding human...
22 July 2011: Stone Age relics may be hidden in Scotland's seas; Two experts from Wessex Archaeology believe that sites of ancient communities may lie submerged beneath the seas around teh Western Isles (Scotland). A number of finds have already been made...
: Populations intermixed well after migration out of Africa; Researchers looking into human evolution have developed a new technique to study more intricately the movement of humans from Africa. The study, conducted by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has...
26 July 2011: Ancient child burial site found in Siberia; An ancient child burial site dating back to the Stone Age has been discovered in the Altai Region, Siberia. Excavations carried out by a local archaeological association led by scientist...
: Major Bronze Age city-state unearthed in Jordan; In the southern Jordan River Valley lies a very large, imposing tall (mound). Surveys and recent excavations have revealed that the tall consists of a long history of human occupation...
: The first Mesolithic open-air cemetery found in England; Recent radiocarbon dating of two skulls found at a sand quarry in Greylake nature reserve near Middlezoy (Somerset, South West England) in 1928 revealed them to be 10,000 years old....
: Carving of a reindeer could be the oldest rock art in Britain; Archaeologist George Nash, a part-time academic for Bristol University, believes a wall carving in a south Wales cave could be Britain's oldest example of rock art. The faint scratchings of...
27 July 2011: 7,000-year-old Scottish site was a Stone Age rest area; Archaeologists believe the remains of burned oak uncovered at the future site of Sainsbury's supermarket on the outskirts of Nairn in the Scottish Highlands to be evidence of an ancient...
: Technology sheds new light on ancient artefacts; Technology which makes it possible to study the finer details of some of the world's greatest historical artefacts has been developed by computer scientists and archaeologists in England, at the...
: Ancient erotic carvings found in Germany; Researchers in Germany have discovered Stone Age cave art including carvings of nude women. Archaeologists working for the Bavarian State Office for Historical Preservation came upon the primitive engravings in...
28 July 2011: Indian rock paintings tell of bygone era; In a large rock formation close to the village of Sebalpani - about 10km from Ambaji town, Gujarat, in northwest India - are found caves with unique rock paintings. Very...
: Part ape, part human; The eroded limestone cave called Malapa - about 40km (25 miles) northwest of Johannesburg - is in a region famous for its ancient human fossils. Paleo-anthropologist Lee Berger believes Malapa...
: Bronze Age 'holy site' found in Central Italy; Italian archaeologists have discovered a sacred mountain where ancient Etruscans worshipped gods and burned sacred objects in their honour during the Bronze Age 3000 years ago. Experts from the Archeological...
: Tests confirm age of prehistoric carving in Wales; Recent discovery of a stylized reindeer engraving in a South Wales by Dr George Nash from the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, now has been scientifically dated....
29 July 2011: Dig yields evidence of ancient Texans; Texas is the site of the oldest archeological dig in North America. Located outside the town of Salado, about 125 miles south of Fort Worth, the site has new evidence...
: Prehistoric campsite discovered in Canada; Archaeologists have found evidence that proves First Nations people were in New Brunswick, Canada more than 10,000 years ago. A large campsite has been uncovered that proves people moved through...
30 July 2011: Lapita pottery discovered in Fiji; For the first time ever, Lapita pottery has been discovered on Vanua Levu - formerly known as Sandalwood Island - the second largest island of Fiji. The pottery dating back...
: 2,800-year-old decorated stone discovered in Mexico; Mexican archaeologists have discovered a 1.5 ton stone relief from the Olmec culture created more than 2,800 years ago, the National Institute of Archaeology and History, or INAH, said in...
: Bulgarian discovery sheds light on Copper Age; A well preserved skeleton from the copper age has been discovered in Kozareva mound near Kableshkovo in Pomorie (Bulgaria). The discovery marks an exciting new development for the village that...
31 July 2011: Bronze Age exhibition in Dartmoor; The rich archaeological landscape at the heart of Dartmoor national park (Devon, England) is the focus of ongoing investigations, and an exhibition is now open to the public. On display...
: Neanderthals were simply outnumbered; The Neanderthals of southwestern Europe may have gone extinct approximately 40,000 years ago because, in large measure, they were simply overwhelmed by the rising numbers of modern humans around them....
: Huge number of statue menhirs found on a Sardinian wall; The astonishing discovery in the Sardinian countryside (Italy) of a small drystone wall entirely made of broken standing stones - many carved with stylised human figures - could make the...