Stone Pages Archaeo News: June 2009 Archives

June 2009 index:

1 June 2009: New Exhibition: Inspired by Stonehenge; A new exhibition featuring memorabilia about Stonehenge opened at Wiltshire Heritage Museum (England) on 16 May 2009. Inspired by Stonehenge focuses on the changing ways the monument has inspired and...
: Grooming for Oxfordshire's White Horse; The age-old tradition of 'scouring' or re-chalking one of Britain's most mysterious ancient monuments is being revived. For centuries locals used to clamber up White Horse hill, freshen up the...
: Ancient irrigation system unearthed in Arizona; Archaeologists preparing for the expansion of a Tucson (Arizona, USA) wastewater treatment facility have discovered the remains of the earliest known irrigation system in the Southwest, a farming community that...
: Bronze Age road found in Wales; A Bronze Age road has been found below Swansea's shifting foreshore (Wales). The short section of track was discovered by a metal detector enthusiast and archaeologists have now dated it...
: Middle East oldest village unearthed in Iran; Iranian and English archeologists have discovered Middle East's oldest village which dates back to at least 9800 BCE in western Iran. The unique archeological discovery reveals Iran was the main...
: Gypsum Cave in Nevada holds glimpses of the past; When he excavated Gypsum Cave (Nevada, USA) in the 1930s, archeologist Mark Harrington concluded that humans and Late Pleistocene animals used the cave around the same time. It was an...
: Skeleton found in India pushes back leprosy's origins; Leprosy has been with us a lot longer than we thought. In a new study, researchers report the discovery of a 4000-year-old skeleton in India with the hallmark ravages of...
: Miami Circle site may soon open as park; The Miami Circle, a 2,000-year-old Native American site that Florida taxpayers shelled out $27 million to buy 10 years ago, may finally open to the public under a frugal state...
: 'Kelp highway' theory proposed for coast settlement; The Pacific coast of the Americas was settled starting about 15,000 years ago during the last glacial retreat by seafaring peoples following a 'kelp highway' rich in marine resources, a...
: Ancient tombs being restored in Mallorca; A team of archaeologists are working to restore the prehistoric necropolis at Son Real (Mallorca, Balearic Isles, Spain) to its previous sate when it was first excavated way back in...
: Site in Pennsylvania gives clues to early civilization; Meadowcroft Rockshelter is an inviting sandstone overhang in a tributary valley of the Ohio River that's been welcoming anglers, hunters and travelers since the Paleo-Indians. The site in Avella, 30...
: Rising seas could spell doom for Orkney islands; The Orkney island of Sanday (Scotland), like the Maldives, may be 'uninhabitable' by the end of the century, a leading climate scientist warned. More dramatically, some experts fear the long,...
7 June 2009: Ancient humans knew sustainable fishing; Early humans living off the coast of California (USA) may have been the first 'farmers' of the sea. By managing sea otter populations they maximized their harvest of abalone and...
: Chinese pottery may be earliest ever found; Bits of pottery discovered in a cave in southern China may be evidence of the earliest development of ceramics by ancient people. The find in Yuchanyan Cave dates to as...
: Hell Gap dig underway again in Wyoming; The G.C. Frison Institute and the Anthropology Department of the University of Wyoming in conjunction with the Wyoming Archaeological Foundation is conducting excavations at the Hell Gap archaeological site, northeast...
: Mammoths roasted in prehistoric kitchen pit; Central Europe's prehistoric people would likely have been amused by today's hand-sized hamburgers and hot dogs, since archaeologists have just uncovered a 29,000 BCE well-equipped kitchen where roasted gigantic mammoth...
: New 'molecular clock' aids dating human migrations; Researchers at the University of Leeds have devised a more accurate method of dating ancient human migration - even when no corroborating archaeological evidence exists. Estimating the chronology of population...
: Two prehistoric tombs unearthed in Hampshire; Two 6,000-year-old tombs have been unearthed in Hampshire (England) in one of the biggest archaeological finds for years. The discovery, thought to be among the oldest ever made in the...
: Ancient artefacts found in West Yorkshire; Ancient artefacts dating back 4,000 years dug up by a gardener at a farm near Haworth (West Yorkshire, England) have been officially recognised as treasure and declared as 'unique' at...
: Suspected chambered tomb unearthed in Orkney; What appears to be a Neolithic chambered tomb has been unearthed on the outskirts of Kirkwall (Orkney, Scotland). The underground structure was discovered by John Hourie while ploughing. He reported...
: 13,000-year-old carved bone discovered in Florida; Local amateur fossil collector James Kennedy appears to have made an unprecedented archaeological discovery that might help confirm a human presence in Treasure Coast (Florida, USA) up to 13,000 years...
: Larger populations triggered Stone Age learning; An explosion of art, music, jewelry and hunting technology appeared 45,000 years ago because of increased population density, rather than the evolution of the human brain, a study said. Researchers...
: Galway may have had 'major' ancient settlement; A Connemara archaeologist says that the recent discovery of two stone axes in Galway city and county points to a 'major' hunter-gatherer presence on the Corrib catchment up to 9,000...
: Prehistoric sites discovered in India; The Geo-Heritage Archaeological Research Centre has discovered three Paleolithic, 27 Microlithic and 26 Megalithic sites, ranging from the prehistoric to historic periods, in a micro-region in the Thenmala valley in...
14 June 2009: Prehistoric mounds under threat near Dublin; A €300m deep water port planned at Balbriggan Co Dublin (Ireland) is concerning archaeologists and experts. This scenic and archaeologically rich area is under threat from industrial development. Bremore contains...
: Stones, snakes and sun - Summer Solstice in Brittany; A Summer Solstice event will be held near Carnac, in Brittany (France). For 5 days, starting on June 18th, there will be talks, sunrise and sunset observations, visits to megalithic...
: Neolithic discoveries in Abu Dhabi; The Historic Environment Department of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) has recently carried out surveys and excavations in different parts in Abu Dhabi (UAE) during which...
: Archaeological dating by re-firing ancient pots; Researchers in the UK have created a new way of dating archaeological artefacts that involves heating ancient pots to unlock their internal clocks. The relatively simple technique could become as...
: Excavation uncovers Bronze Age burial mound in Wales; A Bronze Age burial mound, thought to be at least 3,500 years old, has been discovered in Penycloddiau, Denbighshire (North Wales). The ancient resting place was discovered in an excavation...
: Ancient hunting camp may lie at bottom of Lake Huron; What is now part of Lake Huron's obscured floor became a dry land bridge between modern-day Presque Isle, Michigan (USA), and Point Clark, Ontario (Canada) when lake levels dipped some...
: New details on the prehistoric necropolis discovered in Kerala; As reported last week, archaeologists have discovered a prehistoric necropolis dating back 2,500 years at Anakkara in Malappuram district (India). Now additional details are emerging, showing that on the site...
: Iron Age bodies found in pit on road in England; The skulls of scores of young men have been found in a burial pit in Dorset on the route of a new road for the 2012 Olympics. So far 45...
: Stone circle in East Anglian village?; For generations the sarsen stones at Alphamstone near Sudbury (on the Essex/Suffolk border, England) have been at the centre of hot debate as to whether they were ever part of...
: New discovery of Neolithic jade culture in China; Zhejiang province is famous for its Liangzhu culture, the last Neolithic jade culture of Yangtze River Delta of China. And now more ancient jade vessels dating back five thousand years...
: Damage to prehistoric monuments in Northern Ireland; The results and recommendations of the 'Condition and Management Survey of the Archaeological Resource' (CAMSAR), in Northern Ireland, have just been summarised in the Summer 2009 issue of 'Archaeology Ireland'....
29 June 2009: Prehistoric European cave artists were female; For about as long as humans have created works of art, they've also left behind handprints. People began stenciling, painting, or chipping imprints of their hands onto rock walls at...
: Archaelogists find Neolithic grave in Serbia; Serbian archaeologists have uncovered a seven-millienia old grave in a Neolithic village in the west of the country. The grave contains well-preserved skeletons of a child and an adult, buried...
: Pagans, partygoers greet solstice at Stonehenge; Pagans and partygoers drummed, danced or gyrated in hula hoops to stay awake through the night, around 36,500 people greeted the summer solstice at the ancient stone circle of Stonehenge...
: Food storage began well before farming; People were storing grain long before they learned to domesticate crops, a new study indicates. A structure used as a food granary discovered in recent excavations in Jordan dates to...
: Obsidian 'trail' shows how humans settled in Russian islands; Archaeologists have used stone tools to answer many questions about human ancestors in both the distant and near past and now they are analyzing the origin of obsidian flakes to...
: Intact ancient tomb uncovered in Bethlehem; Workers renovating a house in Bethlehem (Palestinian territories) accidentally discovered an untouched ancient tomb containing clay pots, plates, beads and the bones of two humans, a Palestinian antiquities official said....
: The first Europeans were cannibals; The remains of the 'first Europeans' discovered at an archaeological site in northern Spain have revealed that these prehistoric men were cannibals who particularly liked the flesh of children. "We...
: Possible Bronze Age roundhouse found in Cornwall; The discovery of stones that are thought to date back to the Bronze Age have halted a multi-million pound sewage treatment project in Cornwall (England). South West Water has stopped...
: Prehistoric flute in Germany is oldest known; The wing bone of a griffon vulture with five precisely drilled holes in it is the oldest known musical instrument, a 35,000-year-old relic unearthed in a German cave that offers...
: Rare petroglyphs discovered in Cuban caves; Cuban archaeologists are studying the strange drawings found in caves in eastern Cuba. The petroglyphs, discovered in the Sierra del Rosario reserve located in Pinar del Rio province, have now...
: Ancient well and body found in Cyprus; Archaeologists have found a group of water wells in western Cyprus that was built as long as 10,500 years ago, and the skeleton of a young woman at the bottom...
: Bronze Age finds during road construction in Ireland; Excavation as part of the upgrade of the A1 Belfast to Dublin road between Loughbrickland and Beech Hill (Co. Down, Northern Ireland) has uncovered a Bronze Age burial ground and...
: Models of earliest vehicles found in Turkmenistan; Some of the world's first farmers may have sped around in two-wheeled carts pulled by camels and bulls, suggests a new analysis on tiny models of these carts that date...
: Excavation of a Bulgarian Neolithic site; A team of Dutch anthropologists has arrived to the Bulgarian village of Dzhulyunitsa to research the Neolithic archaeological site there. The object of their research will be oldest funeral in...
: Oldest human settlement in Aegean unearthed; The ruins of the oldest human settlement in the Aegean found so far have been unearthed in archaeological excavations by a team of Greek, Italian and American archaeologists on the...