Stone Pages Archaeo News: January 2017 Archives

January 2017 index:

7 January 2017: Standing stones in Scotland linked to 1314 battle; Radiocarbon dating has revealed a pair of standing stones near the entrance to Police Scotland Central Division's Randolphfield HQ, in Stirling, are not prehistoric, as they were erected around the...
: Ancient 'calendar rock' found in Sicily; Italian archaeologists have found an intriguing 'calendar rock' in Sicily. Featuring a 3.2-foot diameter hole, the rock formation marked the beginning of winter some 5,000 years ago. The holed Neolithic...
10 January 2017: Cypriot-style ceramics in Iron Age Anatolia; Cypriot-style ceramics were popular in Anatolia (present-day Turkey) during the Iron Age, but new research shows some were produced locally, and not imported from central and southern Cyprus, requiring a...
: Polish archaeological research in Burkina Faso; Polish scientists have spent years studying communities in Burkina Faso, a land-locked country in West Africa, north of Ghana. During October and November, archaeologists chose locations to excavate in the...
: DNA of human ancestors found in cave floor dirt; Scientists from the Max Planck Institute in Germany think they may be able to extract the DNA of a human ancestor who's been dead for tens of thousands of years...
11 January 2017: Check-up to 7,000-year-old mummies; More than 7,000 years after they were embalmed by the Chinchorro people, an ancient civilization in modern-day Chile and Peru, 15 mummies were taken to a Santiago clinic to undergo...
: £65m bill to preserve Scottish heritage sites; It will cost £65m (about 79m US$ or €75m) to protect and restore Scotland's heritage sites over the next decade, according to a study on behalf of the Scottish government....
: Neolithic pottery and flint tools found in Fife; A hoard of Neolithic pottery and flint tools, which lay buried for over 4,000 years, has been uncovered during works to lay a pipe in Fife (Scotland). The find at...
12 January 2017: Tibetans lived in the Himalayas up to 12,600 years ago; Fossil human footprints found in 1998 high in the mountains of Tibet, in what was once the mud of a natural hot spring, have now been dated to between 7,400...
: Prehistoric pottery figurines unearthed in China; Pottery figurines have been unearthed in central China's Hunan Province, local archaeologists said. Among the pieces found in the Sunjiagang site of Changde City was a human-shaped figure that was...
: Go-ahead to road tunnel under Stonehenge; A tunnel is to be built under Stonehenge under plans announced by British ministers, in a move that will reignite the controversy over improving major roads around the ancient site....
14 January 2017: Ancient eel traps in Australia; Traps built around a lake 6,000 years ago by the Gunditjmara people are among the earliest surviving examples of aquaculture anywhere. The traps are a series of canals and graded...
19 January 2017: Neanderthals associated with Chatelperronian tool technology; An international team led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany has demonstrated that Neanderthals were responsible for the Chatelperronian, a transitional tool-making industry from central and...
: First humans in North America 10,000 years earlier; The earliest settlement date of North America, previously estimated at 14,000 years BP, is now estimated at 24,000 BP, at the height of the last ice age. University of Montreal...
20 January 2017: Insights into the rituals of the Beaker people in Scotland; There have been some recent interesting developments in the understanding of the lives of the Beaker people in the UK. Beaker people, so called from the distinctive fine pottery which...
23 January 2017: Royal Mail pays homage to Ancient Britain; The Royal Mail in the UK has been issuing series of special stamps for over 50 years, starting in 1965 with Sir Winston Churchill. Their current series is dedicated to...
25 January 2017: 'Plain of Jars' Burial Site Recreated in VR; Archaeologists have recreated in virtual reality the ancient Plain of Jars burial site in Laos, combining aerial video with geophysical data and records of excavations into a record of the...
: 3,000 year old crocodile bones discovered in China; In 2016 a total of 12 bone lamellae of crocodile were discovered in the ruins of Haojing, part of the capital of the Western Zhou Dynasty (1066-770 BCE) in Xi'an,...
: Were the Neanderthals rock collectors?; An international group of researchers has focused attention on a piece of split limestone from the Krapina cave site in Croatia, suggesting that Neanderthals 130,000 years ago purposely collected the...
26 January 2017: Oldest evidence of silk found in ancient tombs; The oldest evidence of silk made by silkworms has been found buried in 8,500-year-old tombs in China. Silk was a rare luxury good in the ancient world. According to Chinese...
: Advanced geometry in prehistoric southwest USA; Arizona State University professor Dr Sherry Towers spent several years studying the Sun Temple archaeological site at Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado, an important regional ceremonial centre for...
27 January 2017: 6,000 year old clay fragment identified as part of a face mask; 6,000 years ago during the Neolithic Period in what is now southern Germany, people lived in lake dwellings built on stilts. They bred cattle, farmed the land, and foraged. Their...
: Did humans wipe out Australian megafauna?; Australian megafauna some 50,000 years ago included half-ton kangaroos, 2-ton wombats, 7-metre-long lizards, 180-kilo flightless birds, 140-kilo marsupial lions and tortoises the size of compact cars. Shortly after the arrival...