Study of remains taken from royal cemetery at Umm el-Qa’ab appears to confirm early Egyptologist’s theory
Court officials and craftspeople serving early Egyptian kings may have been sacrificed when their ruler died, according to research that found fractures in several ancient skulls.
The royal cemetery of Umm el-Qa’ab near Abydos features the tombs and enclosures of the First Dynasty rulers of Egypt, and dates as far back as 3,000BC.
Continue reading...Greek PM hopes handover of Tsar Samuel to Bulgaria will persuade Britain that time has come for ‘truth, reason, justice and morality’
In a ceremony replete with the sort of fanfare usually reserved for great events, Greece and Bulgaria have formally exchanged “a treasury” of relics and bones, sealing a cultural deal negotiated over decades.
The handover involved priceless religious objects removed from Greece at the height of the first world war, as well as remains thought to belong to Tsar Samuel, Bulgaria’s revered medieval warrior ruler.
Continue reading...Community-funded archaeological excavations of ‘really important’ sixth-century monastery also rewrite story of Lismore
To the residents of the Scottish island of Lismore, population 190, history is never very far away. The tiny island near Oban in Argyll has no row of shops or even a pub – if islanders want to meet for a coffee, the only place to do so is in the lively Gaelic heritage centre that records the many centuries of community life on the island.
This quiet place, documentary evidence records, was home to a monastic settlement in the sixth century AD, when missionaries from Ireland were first moving into northern Britain to spread Christianity. But apart from a few fragments of an early carved cross, there was almost nothing to see from this period of history.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Restoration work at Bath Assembly Rooms unearths Roman ditches containing pottery, coins and fragments of a military helmet
The restoration of a Georgian building in Bath once frequented by Jane Austen has unexpectedly provided a tantalising glimpse into the life of the city’s Roman suburbanites.
A network of Roman ditches containing pottery, coins, glassware and a fragment of a military helmet has been found beneath Bath Assembly Rooms in the north of the city.
Continue reading...Jewellery made from BC Iran worn at Odyssey photocall throws spotlight on the trade of rare archeological finds
The Odyssey has stormed cinemas, but while its take on the Homeric epic has created ripples among western classicists, it is an actor’s earrings that have made waves further afield.
Zendaya, who portrays the goddess Athena in the movie, provoked outrage when she appeared at a London photocall wearing earrings that were allegedly made from Iranian artefacts dating back to the 1st millennium BC.
Continue reading...Film star promotes Christopher Nolan film epic wearing gold artefacts dating back almost 3,000 years
The Odyssey is a story about a Greek king’s long journey home. But a pair of earrings worn on the new film adaptation’s press tour – and their long separation from their homeland – is sparking controversy.
At a photocall in London, Zendaya, who plays the goddess Athena in the Christopher Nolan film, wore a pair of earrings fashioned from Iranian artefacts dating back to 700BC.
Continue reading...Well-preserved fourth-century quarters reveal details of daily life, urban development and economic activities
Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered a well-preserved Byzantine-era city in the western desert.
The fourth-century quarters had residential and religious structures, including a basilica-style church in the Dakhla oasis. Archaeologists also found coins, pottery fragments and tools.
Continue reading...Discovery in Siberia suggests bacterium from raw marmots devastated hunter-gatherer tribes about 5,500 years ago
The earliest evidence for an outbreak of plague has been uncovered at late stone age cemeteries in south-eastern Siberia where dozens of hunter-gatherers and their children were buried.
Ancient DNA collected from the remains suggests the disease tore through the sparse communities in devastating waves that began about 5,500 years ago, at least two centuries after the bacterium responsible, Yersinia pestis, first emerged.
Continue reading...People flee historic district of ancient city after airstrikes hit residential areas and damage archaeological sites
Israel has bombed the city of Tyre, killing eight and injuring at least 32 people, and struck dozens of other villages in south Lebanon as it issued forced evacuation orders for the historic Christian quarter of the ancient city for the first time.
Israel struck the al-Masaken neighbourhood without warning on Tuesday morning, sending smoke plumes high above the city’s buildings and igniting fires. Further airstrikes were carried out across the city and a series of bombings hit Abbasieh, a village north of Tyre.
Continue reading...Exclusive: First shipwrecks found in Nassau harbour on New Providence, once the hideout of Blackbeard and Calico Jack
The first shipwrecks linked to the real pirates of the Caribbean in the Bahamas have been discovered by an international team co-directed by a British marine archaeologist.
Blackbeard and Calico Jack Rackham were among pirates who, between the 1690s and 1720s, turned Nassau on the island of New Providence into a hideout where they plotted their next heists on the high seas and divided up their plunder.
Continue reading...Never documented archaeologically before, evidence points to First Nations people caring for and nursing the animal
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The discovery of a millennium-old dingo burial site in western New South Wales, including evidence of a “feeding” ritual never before documented archaeologically, has shed new light on the longstanding relationship between the canines and First Nations people.
The dingo was buried along the Baaka, or Darling River, in Kinchega national park near the Menindee Lakes.
Continue reading...Nearly 2,000-year-old artifact handed over by FBI matches piece missing from museum near Rome for decades
A nearly 2,000-year-old Roman grave marker discovered in a New Orleans backyard has now been returned to Italy.
The marble epitaph – dating back roughly 1,900 years – was officially handed over to Italian officials in Rome on Wednesday during a ceremony led by the FBI. The event also marked the repatriation of another antiquity recovered in the US, the agency said.
Continue reading...Archaeological record suggests hunter gatherers were playing games of chance at the end of the last ice age
Native American hunter gatherers were using dice for gaming and gambling more than 6,000 years before the practice appeared anywhere else, a new study argues.
It says dice were being made and used on the western great plains of North America at the end of the last ice age, more than 12,000 years ago.
Continue reading...Divers in race against time to unearth wreck of the Dannebroge before seabed becomes construction site
More than 200 years after being sunk by Adm Horatio Nelson and the British fleet, a Danish warship has been discovered on the seabed of Copenhagen harbour by marine archaeologists.
Working in thick sediment and almost zero visibility 15 metres (49ft) beneath the waves, divers are in a race against time to unearth the 19th-century wreck of the Dannebroge before it becomes a construction site in a new housing district being built off the Danish coast.
Continue reading...Archaeologists believe remains found in Maastricht, Netherlands, may be of soldier who inspired novel character
More than three-and-a-half centuries after a musket ball to the throat put an end to decades of exemplary swashbuckling, the French soldier who inspired Alexandre Dumas and went on to be immortalised on the stage and screen – not to mention as a plucky cartoon dog – may rise again.
Workers repairing a church in the Dutch city of Maastricht have discovered a skeleton that could belong to the 17th-century Gascon nobleman Charles de Batz-Castelmore – better known as d’Artagnan – whose exploits led Dumas to make him the hero of the Three Musketeers.
Continue reading...Discovery at Monte Verde puts north-to-south expansion theory back at centre of heated debate on continent’s human history
A groundbreaking new study may have once again upended our understanding of human prehistory in the Americas.
For years, the predominant theory of how humans arrived in the western hemisphere centred around the Clovis culture, which crossed the Beringia land bridge from Asia between 13,400 and 12,800 years ago, and spread south.
Continue reading...Scientists trying to work out why Gauls chose to bury some of their dead in seated position facing west
Children at a primary school in eastern France found a strange attraction next to their playground this week: a skeleton sitting upright, peeking out of a circular pit.
It is the latest in a series of bodies discovered in the city of Dijon that were buried in a seated position facing west.
Continue reading...Djidji Ayôkwé was handed to Ivorian officials in Paris earlier this month
A sacred artefact looted by French colonial authorities more than a century ago has been returned to Côte d’Ivoire in one of the most significant cultural restitutions to a former French colony in years.
The Djidji Ayôkwé, a talking drum confiscated in 1916 by French administrators, landed at 8.45am on Friday at the airport in Port Bouët on the outskirts of the economic capital, Abidjan. It was handed over to Ivorian officials in Paris earlier this month after being removed from the Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac Museum.
Continue reading...Conch-shell trumpets discovered in Neolithic settlements and mines in Catalonia make tone similar to french horn, says lead researcher
As a child, Miquel López García was fascinated by the conch shell, kept in the bathroom, that his father’s family in the southern Spanish region of Almería had blown to warn their fellow villagers of rising rivers and approaching flood waters.
The hours he spent getting that “characteristically potent sound out of it” paid off last year when the archaeologist, musicologist and professional trumpet player pressed his lips to eight conch-shell trumpets. Their tones, he says, could carry insights into the lives of the people who lived in north-east Spain 6,000 years ago.
Continue reading...Well-preserved oak and maple boats used for transport and fishing to be displayed in Peterborough
After lying undisturbed in mud for more than 3,000 years, three rare bronze and iron age log boats have emerged to offer fresh insights into prehistoric life.
The boats were among nine discovered in a Cambridgeshire quarry 13 years ago – the largest group of prehistoric boats found in the same UK site. Most were well preserved, with one still able to float despite its long incarceration.
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