Category Archives: Archaeology

Second ancient canoe – this one 3,000 years old – found in Wisconsin lake

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Discovery made by same archaeologist less than a year after finding another historical canoe in the same body of water

A 3,000-year-old canoe has been found in Lake Mendota in Madison, Wisconsin, less than a year after another historical canoe dating back more than a millennium was discovered in the same body of water.

An archaeologist found the artifact in pieces before it was recovered from the lake last Thursday in collaboration with Wisconsin’s Native Nations, a press release from the Wisconsin Historical Society said.

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Israeli archaeologists find traces of opium in 3,500-year-old pottery

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Archaeologists say find supports theory that drug was used in burial rituals, possibly to ‘enter ecstatic state’

Israeli archaeologists have discovered opium residue in 3,500-year-old pottery pieces, providing evidence to support the theory that the hallucinogenic drug was used in ancient burial rituals.

The joint investigation by the Israel Antiquities Authority and Weizmann Institute of Science began in 2012 when excavations in the central Israeli town of Yehud revealed a series of late bronze-age graves.

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Ornate Byzantine floor mosaic discovered by Palestinian farmer

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Archaeologists believe the find in an olive grove in the Gaza Strip dates from 5th-7th century AD

An ornate Byzantine floor mosaic showing colourful birds and other animals has been discovered by chance in Gaza after a Palestinian farmer planted new trees on his land.

Salman al-Nabahin unearthed the mosaic pavement, thought to date from the fifth to the seventh century AD, six months ago while working in his olive orchard in Bureij refugee camp, about half a mile from the border with Israel.

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Pakistan’s monsoon rains threaten world heritage site of Mohenjo-daro

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Curator of site says several walls built nearly 5,000 years ago have collapsed and repairs are under way

In flood-stricken Pakistan, where an unprecedented monsoon season has killed hundreds of people, the rains now threaten a famed archaeological site dating back 4,500 years.

The ruins of Mohenjo-daro, located in southern Sindh province near the Indus River, and a Unesco world heritage site, are considered among the best preserved urban settlements in south Asia. They were discovered in 1922, and mystery still surrounds the disappearance of its civilisation, which coincided with those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

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Huge megalithic complex of more than 500 standing stones discovered in Spain

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Archaeologists says prehistoric site in Huelva province could be one of largest of its kind in Europe

A huge megalithic complex of more than 500 standing stones has been discovered in southern Spain that could be one of the largest in Europe, archaeologists have said.

The stones were discovered on a plot of land in Huelva, a province flanking the southernmost part of Spain’s border with Portugal, near the Guadiana River.

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Shipwreck of Captain Cook’s Endeavour being eaten by ‘termites of the ocean’, expert says

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Shipworms and crustaceans called gribbles have infiltrated the wood of the vessel off Rhode Island

There are fears the wreck of Captain James Cook’s Endeavour is being destroyed by shipworms, the “termites of the ocean”.

In February the Australian Maritime Museum announced that the shipwreck, in waters off the coast of Rhode Island in the US, was “the final resting place” of that famous historical ship.

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Discoveries in Pompeii reveal lives of lower and middle classes

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Archaeologists are enriching our knowledge about those who were ‘vulnerable class during political crises and food shortages’

A trunk with its lid left open, a wooden dishware closet and a three-legged accent table topped by decorative bowls. These are among the latest discoveries by archaeologists that are enriching knowledge about middle-class lives in Pompeii before Mount Vesuvius’s furious eruption buried the ancient Roman city in volcanic debris.

Pompeii’s archaeological park, one of Italy’s top tourist attractions, announced the recent finds on Saturday.

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Fears over building works at Afghan Buddhas of Bamiyan site

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Unesco says it has not been consulted on project and local experts are alarmed at Taliban plans

The Taliban have launched construction work on a tourism complex just metres from the cliff that held the Bamiyan Buddha statues, which archeologists and experts warn could cause permanent damage to the sensitive world heritage site.

The project aims to “rebuild” a historic bazaar, which was destroyed in the civil war of the 1990s. Under the Taliban blueprint, the area will become a tourism centre with restaurants, guesthouses, parking, public toilets and handicraft and grocery shops.

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After 350 years, sea gives up lost jewels of Spanish shipwreck

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Marine archaeologists stunned by priceless cache long hidden beneath the Bahamas’ shark-infested waters

It was a Spanish galleon laden with treasures so sumptuous that its sinking in the Bahamas in 1656 sparked repeated salvage attempts over the next 350 years. So when another expedition was launched recently, few thought that there could be anything left – but exquisite, jewel-encrusted pendants and gold chains are among spectacular finds that have now been recovered, having lain untouched on the seabed for hundreds of years.

The Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas (Our Lady of Wonders) went down on the western side of the Little Bahama Bank, over 70km offshore, but the newly discovered treasures were found across a vast debris trail spanning more than 13km.

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Medieval pendant with Three Lions unveiled ahead of women’s football final

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Detectorists uncover 12th century horse harness pendant with England’s heraldic emblem

Football may or may not be coming home to England in Sunday’s Euros 22 final at Wembley, but a new archaeological discovery illustrates quite how long the Three Lions have been cherished in the team’s home country.

A tiny medieval pendant, made from copper alloy and featuring the famous heraldic emblem, has come to light after being found late last year by metal detectorists in Wormleighton, Warwickshire. Dating from the 12th century, the pendant was designed to hang from a horse harness, its motif picked out in red enamel and gold.

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Germany hands over two Benin bronzes to Nigeria

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Two countries sign restitution agreement covering more than 1,000 items in German hands

Germany has physically handed over two Benin bronzes and put more than 1,000 other items from its museums’ collections into Nigeria’s ownership, more than a century after they were looted by British soldiers from the once powerful kingdom in west Africa.

The German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, and the culture minister, Claudia Roth, signed a restitution agreement with their respective Nigerian counterparts, Zubairu Dada and Lai Mohammed, in Berlin on Friday afternoon.

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Peru wildfire threatens Machu Picchu as remote location hampers efforts to control blaze

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Twenty hectares near Inca ruins affected in blaze started by farmers burning grass before sowing crops

Peruvian firefighters were fighting to contain a forest fire near the Incan ruins of Machu Picchu as the blaze threatened to close in on the ancient city in the Andean mountains on Thursday.

The fire, which had engulfed an area about half the size of Vatican City, was started on Tuesday by farmers burning grass and debris to prepare to sow crops.

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Early human ancestors one million years older than earlier thought

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Fossils from South African cave are 3.4 to 3.6m years old and walked the Earth at same time as east African relatives

The fossils of our earliest ancestors found in South Africa are a million years older than previously thought, meaning they walked the Earth around the same time as their east African relatives like the famous “Lucy”, according to new research.

The Sterkfontein caves at the Cradle of Humankind world heritage site southwest of Johannesburg have yielded more Australopithecus fossils than any other site in the world.

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Gold miner in Canada finds mummified 35,000-year-old woolly mammoth

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Discovery in the Klondike ranks as the most complete mummified mammal found in the Americas

It was a young miner, digging through the northern Canadian permafrost in the seemingly aptly named Eureka Creek, who sounded the alarm when his front-end loader struck something unexpected in the Klondike gold fields.

What he had stumbled upon would later be described by the territory’s palaeontologist as “one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world”: a stunningly preserved carcass of a baby woolly mammoth thought to be more than 35,000 years old.

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Inca-era tomb unearthed beneath home in Peru’s capital

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500-year old structure, found in working-class area of Lima, thought to contain remains of society elites

Scientists have unearthed an Inca-era tomb under a home in the heart of Peru’s capital, Lima, a burial believed to hold remains wrapped in cloth alongside ceramics and fine ornaments.

The lead archeologist, Julio Abanto, told Reuters the 500-year-old tomb contained “multiple funerary bundles” tightly wrapped in cloth.

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Mystery of Waterloo’s dead soldiers to be re-examined by academics

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Modern techniques to test traditional explanation that most bones from 1815 battle were ground into powder for fertiliser

It was an epic battle that has been commemorated in words, poetry and even a legendary Abba song, but 207 years to the day after troops clashed at Waterloo, a gruesome question remains: what happened to the dead?

While tens of thousands of men and horses died at the site in modern-day Belgium, few remains have been found, with amputated legs and a skeleton unearthed beneath a car park south of Brussels among the handful of discoveries.

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Wreck of Royal Navy warship sunk in 1682 identified off Norfolk coast

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HMS Gloucester could be the ‘most historic maritime discovery since the raising of the Marie Rose’

The wreck of a Royal Navy warship which sank in 1682 while carrying the future king James Stuart has been identified off the coast of Norfolk.

The wreckage of HMS Gloucester was actually found in 2007 by two brothers, Julian and Lincoln Barnwell, alongside their late father and two friends, following a four-year search which covered an area of more than 5,000 nautical miles.

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65,000 year-old ‘Swiss Army knife’ proves ancient humans shared knowledge, research says

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The prehistoric artefacts, all made to a similar shape and template, are found in enormous numbers across southern Africa across vast distances

A 65,000-year-old tool – a kind of ancient Swiss Army knife – found across southern Africa has provided scientists with proof that the ancestors of modern homo sapiens were communicating with each other.

In a world first, a team of international scientists have found early humans across the continent made the stone tool in exactly the same shape, using the same template, showing that they shared knowledge with each other.

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Briton given 15 years in Iraqi jail for smuggling antiquities to appeal verdict

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Jim Fitton, 66, hoped for short suspended sentence after collecting fragments during archaeology tour

Lawyers for a British geologist handed a 15-year sentence by an Iraqi judge after being convicted of smuggling antiquities will immediately appeal against the shock verdict, which has left his family “stunned”.

Jim Fitton, 66, arrived at court in Baghdad hoping for a short suspended sentence after being charged with collecting fragments from a site in southern Iraq during an organised archaeology tour. Instead, he was found guilty under a Saddam-era law that legal experts should not have applied to the case.

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Digital mapping reveals network of settlements thrived in pre-Columbian Amazon

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Ruins of monuments, villages, causeways and canals hidden in the dense rainforest are evidence of ‘Amazonian urbanism’

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a vast network of settlements hidden beneath the undergrowth of the Bolivian Amazon, in what has been described as the clearest example yet of the complex societies that thrived in a region once held to be pristine wilderness.

The system of monumental centres, towns and villages spans hundreds, if not thousands, of square kilometres of the Llanos de Mojos region, a tropical savannah in the Amazonian basin.

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