Artefacts believed to date back to 980s found by girl metal-detecting in cornfield last autumn
Nearly 300 silver coins believed to be more than 1,000 years old have been discovered near a Viking fortress site in north-west Denmark, a museum has said.
The trove – lying in two spots not far apart – was unearthed by a girl who was metal-detecting in a cornfield last autumn.
Continue reading...The circular carved stone, unearthed at the Yucatán’s Chichén Itzá complex, displays hieroglyphic writing and two game players
A stone scoreboard used in an ancient ritual ball game has been discovered at the famed Mayan Chichén Itzá archaeological site on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula.
The circular piece, measuring just over 12.6in (32cm) in diameter and weighing 88lbs (40kg), displays hieroglyphic writing surrounding two players standing next to a ball, according to a statement from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).
Continue reading...Metal used for west African artworks was acquired from manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the slave trade
Scientists have discovered that some of the Benin bronzes were made with brass mined thousands of miles away in the German Rhineland.
The Edo people in the Kingdom of Benin, modern Nigeria, created their extraordinary sculptures with melted down brass manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the transatlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries.
Continue reading...It is thought the Roman emperor Claudius could have inspired work found in the temple of Dendera
Archaeologists have unearthed a sphinx-like statue and the remains of a shrine in an ancient temple in southern Egypt.
The artefacts were found in the temple of Dendera, in Qena province, 280 miles (450km) south of Cairo, Egypt’s antiquities ministry said.
Continue reading...The technique – known as proteomics – could bring new insights into the past two million years of humanity’s history
Tiny traces of protein lingering in the bones and teeth of ancient humans could soon transform scientists’ efforts to unravel the secrets of the evolution of our species.
Researchers believe a new technique – known as proteomics – could allow them to identify the proteins from which our predecessors’ bodies were constructed and bring new insights into the past 2 million years of humanity’s history.
Continue reading...Artefacts, video and 3D model tell tragic story of the Gloucester, which ran aground carrying future king
The remains of a 17th-century royal shipwreck will go on display in Norwich as part of an exhibition exploring its last voyage.
The Gloucester sank off the Norfolk coast in 1682 while carrying the future king of England, Scotland and Ireland, James Stuart, then the Duke of York.
Continue reading...Klein Hollandia discovery ‘opens up fascinating chapter in rich, shared maritime history between UK and Netherlands’
• Shipwrecked: how tech is revealing world of 3m lost vessels
A remarkably preserved shipwreck known only as the “unknown wreck off Eastbourne” has finally been identified as the 17th-century Dutch warship Klein Hollandia which was involved in all the big battles in the second Anglo-Dutch war.
Its identity has been confirmed after painstaking research by archeologists and scientists after its initial discovery in 2019, having lain 32 metres (105ft) underwater on the seabed since 1672.
Continue reading...The 4,300-year-old mummy was found at the bottom of a 15-metre shaft near the Step Pyramid at Saqqara
Egyptologists have uncovered a Pharaonic tomb near the capital, Cairo, containing what may be the oldest and most complete mummy yet to be discovered in the country, the excavation team leader has said.
The 4,300-year-old mummy was found at the bottom of a 15-metre shaft in a recently uncovered group of fifth and sixth dynasty tombs near the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, Zahi Hawass, director of the team, told reporters.
Continue reading...House of the Vettii features ornate and erotic friezes – and a fresco of the god Priapus with a huge phallus
An ornate house – containing a fresco featuring a huge phallus – that was owned by two freed men freed from slavery in the ancient city of Pompeii has reopened to the public.
The House of the Vettii was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD74 before being rediscovered in a largely preserved state during excavations in the late 19th century.
Continue reading...Vessel that sank with more than 200 transported people onboard is being used to humanise the story of slavery
In 2015, a delegation from the Smithsonian Institution travelled to Mozambique to inform the Makua people of a singular and long-overdue discovery. Two hundred and twenty-one years after it sank in treacherous waters off Cape Town, claiming the lives of 212 enslaved people, the wreck of the Portuguese slave ship the São José Paquete D’Africa had been found. When told the news, a Makua leader responded with a gesture that no one on the delegation will ever forget.
“One of the chiefs took a vessel we had, filled it with soil and asked us to bring that vessel back to the site of the slave ship so that, for the first time since the 18th century, his people could sleep in their own land,” says Lonnie Bunch, now the secretary of the Smithsonian.
Continue reading...On a continent that has long attracted western expeditions, a wave of young people are now exploring sites
A late morning in Khartoum. Inside a low, dusty building in the centre of the Sudanese capital, there are crates of artefacts, a 7ft replica of a 2,000-year-old stone statue of a Nubian god, and students rushing through the corridors. Outside is noisy traffic, blinding sunlight and both branches of the Nile.
Heading down one staircase are Sabrine Jamal, Nadia Musa, Athar Bela and Sabrine al-Sadiq, all studying archaeology at Khartoum University. Not one of them is older than 24 and they see themselves as pioneers, breaking new ground on a continent that has long attracted western expeditions, specialists and adventurers but whose own archaeologists have received less attention overseas.
Continue reading...Archaeologists say cave complex must be preserved for ‘indisputable and cultural value’
Dmytro Perov was at his day job, analysing planning applications for Kyiv city council, when he saw a familiar address – the derelict house in central Kyiv built by his family in the late 1800s that was confiscated by the Bolsheviks. The owners of the site now wanted to build on it and had made the unlikely claim that their office was based at the house, which Perov knew had no roof and collapsed walls.
When he was a child, his grandmother said somewhere on the land around the former family home were rumoured to be ancient caves. He described it as a “small family legend”. Ukraine is home to a few cave complexes, most of which were built by monks, the most famous being Kyiv’s Pecherska Lavra – or Cave Monastery in English.
Continue reading...Archeologist says artwork was ‘unique in Australia’, calling for better protection at Koonalda Cave
Vandals have destroyed a 30,000-year-old artwork at a sacred cave in South Australia, as experts decried the “massive, tragic loss” and expressed frustration at the lack of protection at the site.
The vandals entered Koonalda Cave at Nullarbor Plain and scrawled graffiti across the heritage-listed site, writing “don’t look now, but this is a death cave”.
Continue reading...Three 2,500-year-old pieces will be ‘donated’ to Greece’s Archbishop Ieronymos II amid wider conversation about future of Parthenon marbles held by Britain
Pope Francis has decided to return to Greece three 2,500-year-old pieces of the Parthenon that have been in the papal collections of the Vatican Museums for two centuries.
The Vatican said in a brief statement that the pope was giving them to Archbishop Ieronymos II, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church and Greece’s spiritual leader, as a “donation” and “a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth”.
Continue reading...Two sarcophaguses unearthed in reconstruction work after 2019 fire identified as elite canon of cathedral and young cavalier
Two lead sarcophaguses discovered buried under the nave at Notre Dame Cathedral in what was described as an “extraordinary and emotional” find have begun giving up their secrets, French scientists announced on Friday.
The first contains the remains of a high priest who died in 1710 after what experts say appeared to be a sedentary life. The occupant of the second has not yet been identified – and may never be – but is believed to be a young, wealthy and privileged noble who could have lived as far back as the 14th century.
Continue reading...Find dating from about 650AD in Northamptonshire includes jewelled necklace and changed archaeologists’ view of the period
Archaeologists don’t often bounce with excitement, but the Museum of London archeology team could hardly contain themselves on Tuesday as they unveiled an “exhilarating” discovery made on the last day of an otherwise barren dig in the spring.
“This is the most significant early medieval female burial ever discovered in Britain,” said the leader of the dig, Levente Bence Balázs, almost skipping with elation. “It is an archaeologist’s dream to find something like this.”
Continue reading...Amateur fossil hunters find skull connected to body of marine giant elasmosaur for the first time in Australia
A group of female graziers from outback Queensland who hunt fossils in their downtime have uncovered the remains of a 100m-year-old creature that palaeontologists are likening to the Rosetta Stone for its potential to unlock the discovery of several new species of prehistoric marine giant.
One of the “Rock Chicks” – as the amateur palaeontologists call themselves – uncovered the fossilised remains of the long-necked plesiosaur, known as an elasmosaur, while searching her western Queensland cattle station in August.
Continue reading...Exhibitions in UK and Africa rewrite history by celebrating discoveries of overlooked black excavators in colonial era
The photographs are rare, the subject choice unusual, but what the photographer captured was a common sight in the early 20th century: a team of colonised people, hard at work under a hot sun, excavating an ancient monument.
Today, without these photos, taken in Kenya in the 1940s and 50s, there would be scarcely any evidence that African Kenyans were present at archaeological digs. Their contributions and priceless finds were credited to their European bosses – and their important role in unearthing the history of their own continent has been all but forgotten.
Continue reading...Student archaeologists unearth Huaca Pintada, described as ‘the most exciting and important find of recent years’
A team of student archaeologists has rediscovered a 1,000-year-old multicoloured mural depicting a deity surrounded by warriors which was last seen a century ago in northern Peru.
Known as the Huaca Pintada, the 30-metre-long wall painted with fantastical images depicting mythical scenes was first found in 1916 by a band of treasure-hunting tomb raiders in Illimo near the city of Chiclayo.
Continue reading...Third-century coins taken in heist involving ‘cut off’ phone and internet connections in Manching, Bavaria
Thieves have stolen a hoard of Celtic coins worth several million euros from a German museum after apparently disrupting local telephone and internet connections.
Employees at the museum in Manching discovered on Tuesday that a “showcase was broken” and the collection of 450 coins had been stolen, local police told AFP.
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