Stone Pages Archaeo News: August 2011 Archives

August 2011 index:

4 August 2011: 33,000-year-old dog skull unearthed in Siberia; A very well-preserved 33,000 year old canine skull from a cave in the Siberian Altai mountains shows some of the earliest evidence of dog domestication ever found. But the specimen...
: Chinese tools introduced to Japan 20,000 years ago; Archaeologists from China and Japan said that a technique used to make stone tools in north China later made its way to Japan in what might've been the earliest exchange...
5 August 2011: Chambered tomb unearthed in Terqa, Syria; Team leader Jacek Tomczyk of Poland's Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University reports on two Bronze Age burials in a tomb from the ancient trade town of Terqa, a Mesopotamian archeological site...
: Project to map ancient England; The School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford is to compile a map of prehistoric England for the first time. The 'Portal to the Past' project will allow people...
: Mystery of first North American settlers close to solution; A combined team from Washington State University and the University of British Columbia is currently in the process of excavating a settlement attributed to the Coast Salish people, located on...
6 August 2011: An early understanding of tides; Those of you who live near the sea or the ocean will understand the importance of knowing your local tide timetable, with most of us using a booklet listing the...
12 August 2011: Serpent mound could be world's largest; Miami Bluff Drive, in Mariemont, Ohio, USA, curves along beside an earthwork partly covered in trees, honeysuckle and weeds, beyond which is the edge of a wood. University of Cincinnati...
: Syrian city survived civilisation collapse; The site of Tell Qarqur in northwest Syria was occupied for nearly 10,000 years. Archaeologists have determined that 4200 years ago, at a time when cities and civilisations were collapsing...
: New book on Neolithic 'superhighways'; A new book by German archaeologist Dr Heinrich Kusch has been published, which details his findings on Neolithic 'superhighways' from across the whole of Europe. The book is entitled 'Secret...
: The 'Brodgar Boy' unearthed in Orkney; In Orkney (Scotland) at the excavation of the Ness of Brogar, a new find has excited researchers. In addition to a pot discovered in Structure 14, a volunteer from Cheshire...
13 August 2011: Significant finds at Bronze Age site in Cyprus; The results have recently been released of excavations which were carried out earlier this year at the site of a Late Bronze Age harbour near Larnaca, in Cyprus. The head...
: Final journey for 8,000-year-old African canoe; A precious artifact, known as the Dufuna Canoe, is to be permanently housed in a new museum complex, located in Damaturu, the Yobe State capital, in Nigeria. The canoe is...
: Bronze Age cist uncovered in Scotland; An archaeological investigation at a 19th Century monastery in the Border Region of Scotland has lead to the unexpected find of human remains buried inside a Bronze Age stone cist....
: Iron Age 'Interior Decorators'; Interior decorating is not the modern phenomenon that you may have thought. Archaeologists working on a prehistoric site near Wennugen, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, have found fragments of wall dating from...
: Prehistoric enclosure found in Devon; Before any groundworks can be conducted by Utility companies in the UK, archaeological surveys have to be carried out, paid for by the Utility company. During one of these surveys...
14 August 2011: Bronze Age cemeteries reveal when elderly gained power; New research on people living in the Bronze Age suggests the elderly began to gain power over six centuries of cultural change. These findings rely on skeletal aging of bones...
: British Columbia village may be 10,000 years old; When Farid Rahemtulla and his anthropology students began to dig in the forest floor on Calvert Island (Canada) he pretty much knew what to expect - lots of clam and...
: Long barrow in Gloucestershire reopens after restoration; Uley Long Barrow in Gloucestershire (England), known as Hetty Pegler's Tump, has been reopened to the public after two years of repairs. The site was closed in 2009 while urgent...
: Underground chamber unearthed in Irish garden; An ancient underground chamber which could date back 2,000 years has been unearthed near Clonmany in Inishowen (County Donegal, Ireland). Discovered by Sean Devlin, the previously unrecorded structure appears to...
15 August 2011: The Nok - West Africa's earliest known civilisation; In 1943, in the central Nigerian town of Jos, British archaeologist Bernard Fagg received a terracotta head that had been on a scarecrow in a nearby field. The piece resembled...
: Early settlers arrived in the Marianas 4000 years ago; The Marianas are among the first Pacific islands inhabited. Archaeologists discovered the Marianas archipelago's first inhabitants arrived around 2000 BCE, or 4000 years ago. In comparison, Hawaii's first inhabitants arrived...
: Prehistoric burial cist excavated on Dartmoor; Excavation has begun of a prehistoric burial cist, situated high up on Whitehorse Hill on northern Dartmoor (southwest England). The cist was discovered 10 years ago when its end stone...
16 August 2011: 25,000-year-old pendant unearthed in Spain; A pendant some 25,000 years old has been found in the Irikaitz dig in northern Spain's Basque region by archaeologists from the Sociedad Aranzadi. The piece, an oblong gray smooth...
: Iron Age burial site found on Skye; The remains of an ancient burial cist and pottery have been uncovered at the site of a new £1.3m health centre on Skye (Inner Hebrides, Scotland). No human remains have...
: Prehistoric body discovered in Irish bog; Iron Age human remains have been discovered in a County Laois (Ireland) bog. The remains, understood to be those of a young woman, were found by an employee of Bord...
17 August 2011: Bronze Age pottery found on Cornish site; One of the most important archaeological sites in Cornwall (England) is under attack from the sea, but now grants have been made to ensure the ancient settlement near Gunwalloe is...
18 August 2011: 3750-year-old settlement unearthed in Sri Lanka; The oldest human dwelling so far identified in Sri Lanka has been discovered in Haldummulla. Prof. Raj Somadeva, of the post graduate institute of Archaeology in the Kelaniya University, said...
: Britain's first Iron Age planned town discovered; Beneath the Roman town of Silchester or Calleva Atrebatum near modern Reading (Berkshire, England) lies the first pre-Roman planned town discovered in Britain. Recent excavations have shown evidence of an...
19 August 2011: 10,000 years of human habitation in Maryland; For over three years a team of archaeologists has been digging at a site in Maryland (USA). The area is known as Pig Point and is a prehistoric Indian site....
: Iron Age causeway preserved in peat bog; A team of archaeologists from the University of Birmingham (England) have been excavating in the wetlands of the East Anglian Region of the UK, around the River Waveney. They found...
21 August 2011: Prehistoric petroglyphs of mammoths found in Utah; Rock art specialists Ekkehart Malotki and Henry Wallace report the discovery of portrayals of mammoths and a possible bison at the Upper Sand Island rock art site along the San...
: Iranian mound excavated for signs of Kura-Aras culture; A team of archaeologists is currently working on a mound located near the town of Malard in the southwest of Tehran (Iran) in order to find artifacts of the Kura-Aras...
: 7,000-year-old site unearthed in Iowa; University of Iowa archaeologists announced the discovery of a 7,000-year-old archaeological site in Des Moines (Iowa, USA). The site, nicknamed 'the Palace' because of its size and preservation, yielded the...
22 August 2011: Stone shelter in Colorado is probably 8,000 year-old; Archaeologists may have discovered evidence of people living in Colorado's Grand Valley 8,000 years ago. During a recent dig, researchers with the Dominguez Anthropological Research Group (DARG) uncovered a prehistoric...
: Scottish prehistoric mummies made from jigsaw of body parts; DNA tests on Scottish prehistoric mummies revealed they were made of body parts from several different people, arranged to look like one person. The four bodies discovered in 2001 on...
24 August 2011: Volunteers needed to preserve Cornish prehistoric sites; Conservation charity BTCV will be running volunteering days on the last Friday of each month, including one in North Cornwall (England) this week. The work to be done will include...
: Dig to understand why Iron Age broch collapsed; Archaeologists in Scotland are trying to understand how and when an Iron Age tower called a broch in the north west Highlands was left in ruins. The outer wall of...
25 August 2011: Human precursors went to sea; A team of researchers including North Carolina State University (USA) geologist Karl Wegmann found evidence that our ancestors were crossing open water more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists had...
: Ancient Saharan brain surgery; Skulls of three men from North Africa's ancient Garamantian civilisation, which flourished in the Sahara Desert from 3,100 to 1,400 years ago, contain holes and indentations that were made intentionally...
26 August 2011: 'King Arthur' loses Stonehenge battle; A druid, who had changed his name to King Arthur Pendragon, has lost his High Court battle to have the remains of what he refers to as 'ancient royalty' re-buried...
: Doubt cast on theory of European origins; It had long been thought that an influx of farmers from Western Asia, approximately 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, rapidly displaced and replaced the incumbent stone age hunters. But recent...
30 August 2011: 170,000-years-old skull unearthed in France; A fraction of a prehistoric skull, which is believed to be 170,000 years old, has been unearthed in a cave in the eastern suburbs of the French town of Nice....
: Neanderthal survival story revealed in Jersey caves; New investigations at an iconic cave site on the Channel Island of Jersey have led archaeologists to believe the Neanderthals have been widely under-estimated. The site at La Cotte de...
: Ancient bone from tall man found in Japan; Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient forearm bone from the Mabuni Hantabaru site in Itoman (Southern Japan), believed to be from a Jomon period male roughly 169 centimeters tall - much...