A 1,500-year-old seal with the image of the seven-branched Temple Menorah has been discovered near the city of Acre. The ceramic stamp, which dates from the Byzantine period in the 6th century CE, was found during ongoing Israel Antiquities Authority excavations at Horbat Uza, east of Acre, which are being undertaken before the construction of the Acre-Carmiel railroad track. It is thought the stamp was used to mark baked goods, and is known as a “bread stamp.”
At Ashkleon archaeologists use modern scientific techniques to unravel the ancient site. “We have developed a whole new integrative approach to archaeology that starts with the team identifying a good problem in the field and then continues interactively between field and lab,” Dr. Weiner said.
Archaeologists in Bulgaria announced on January 12 2012 that they had found a unique ceramic relief of a Thracian Horseman – a key figure in cult worship – estimated to date from the fourth century BCE, at the country’s Perperikon site.
Archaeologists working in Egypt have discovered the tomb of a female singer in the Valley of the Kings. The woman, Nehmes Bastet, was a temple singer during Egypt’s 22nd Dynasty (approximately 945 – 712BC), according to an inscription in the tomb.
Kathleen Deagan takes issue with treasure hunters in an editorial in the St. Augustine Record.
Confederate Civil War vessel H.L. Hunley, the world’s first successful combat submarine, was unveiled in full and unobstructed for the first time on Thursday, capping a decade of careful preservation. ”It’s like looking at the sub for the first time. It’s like the end of a long night,” said Paul Mardikian, senior conservator since 1999 of the project to raise, excavate and conserve the Hunley.
Archaeologists’ chance encounter with an islander has led them to the site of a possible medieval fishing village on the Western Isles. Last year, fishermen, beachcombers, divers and islanders in the Hebrides were asked for information on where archaeologists might find ancient sites along shorelines and the answers have provided archaeologists with many new sites to investigate.
Airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology, which combines sophisticated laser surveying instruments and GPS, allows scientists to create bare earth maps of thousands of square kilometers with decimeter resolution in a matter of days, regardless of the extent of forests or other vegetation. This technology allows archaeologists an unencumbered–and unprecedented–three dimensional view of a vast expanse of early urban civilization covered by thick vegetation, such as the Maya site, Caracol.
The 12th century cave city and monastery of Vardzia in southern Georgia was a monumental undertaking, ultimately resulting in a colossal rock-cut monastery with 13 levels and 6,000 dwelling places for monks and those who were fleeing any invaders. Vardzia, however, faces a new threat, particularly related to priceless wall paintings that adorn the interior of the Church of the Dormition, which have deteriorated and faded due largely to past neglect and mismanagement.
A team of divers from a Florida-based exploration trust have discovered the wreck of a British submarine that sank off the coast of Malta in one of the worst naval disasters of the second world war.
Since 2005, the University of Denver’s Department of Anthropology has been conducting a long-term community-based archaeology and heritage project at Amache, a World War II Japanese American Internment Camp. They conduct surface surveys, examine any sub-surface indicators through ground penetrating radar, excavate, perform laboratory processing and analysis of the finds, do collections management tasks, and work with the historic and archival material culture.
The deforestation that has stripped the Amazon since the 1970s has also exposed a long-hidden secret lurking underneath thick rain forest: flawlessly designed geometric shapes spanning hundreds of yards in diameter. Instead of being pristine forests, barely inhabited by people, parts of the Amazon may have been home for centuries to large populations numbering well into the thousands and living in dozens of towns connected by road networks.
A project to explore Megalithic sites has begun in Kerala, with hopes of better understanding the period during which dolmens were constructed, including possibly uncovering more about the stone age spice trade.
Last year a team of archaeologists, from York and the University of Manchester, discovered Britain’s earliest surviving house at Star Carr. Now the archaeologists aim to take advantage of new techniques to integrate high-resolution records of palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental change with the results from new excavations.
Star Carr – The Otherside of the Antler from Shoot Productions on Vimeo.