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Fig. 1. Map of the Harrat in Syria, Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Stephan F.J. Kempe1, Ahmad Al-Malbeh21: Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany; 2: Hashemite University Zarka, Jordan The eastern “panhandle” of the kingdom of Jordan is partly covered by a vast and rugged lava desert, the Harrat, covering about ca. 11.400 km2 (Fig. 1). Scoured by wind in winter and scorched dry by the sun in summer, the surface is covered by black basalt stones, making this area seem as uninviting, hostile and inaccessible as is imaginable.Nevertheless this modern day desolate desert proves to be as rich in archaeological heritage...

When the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the 4,000-year-old Palace of Minos on Crete in 1900, he saw the vestiges of a long-lost civilization whose artefacts set it apart from later Bronze-Age Greeks. The Minoans, as Evans named them, were refugees from Northern Egypt who had been expelled by invaders from the South about 5,000 years ago, he claimed. Modern archaeologists have questioned that version of events, and now ancient DNA recovered from Cretan caves suggests that the Minoan civilization emerged from the early farmers who settled the island thousands of years earlier....

Archaeologists have unearthed what could be the earliest evidence of ancient human ancestors hunting and scavenging meat. Animal bones and thousands of stone tools used by ancient hominins suggest that early human ancestors were butchering and scavenging animals at least 2 million years ago.

Archaeologists have uncovered an "extraordinary" mosaic that would've been used as the floor of a public building during the Byzantine Period in what is today Israel, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced.

Virtual tour of Herculaneum, documenting the site, and the work of the Herculaneum Conservation Project. Click on the node-markers to view an interactive 360-degree panorama (in a new window). The plan above shows the locations of panoramas made mainly in 2001 (a few are from 1999), where the aim was to provide an overview of the site (as it was then), along with tours of a few selected houses. The menu of houses and other areas at left accesses additional, more recent coverage (including revisits to some houses and other structures) made from 2003 onward.

Scientists find cannibalism at American settlement WASHINGTON — Scientists say they have found the first solid archaeological evidence that some of the earliest American colonists survived harsh conditions by resorting to cannibalism. On Wednesday, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and archaeologists from Jamestown announced the discovery of the bones of a 14-year-old girl with clear signs that she was cannibalized. The human remains date back to the deadly winter of 1609-1610, known as the "starving time" in Jamestown, when hundreds of colonists died. Scientists have said the settlers arrived from England during the worst drought in 800 years....

Humans lived in South America at the height of the last ice age, thousands of years earlier than we thought, according to a controversial study. A team claims to have found 22,000-year-old stone tools at a site in Brazil, though other archaeologists are disputing the claim. Christelle Lahaye of Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3 University in France and colleagues excavated a rock shelter in north-east Brazil and found 113 stone tools. The team dated the sediments in which the tools were buried using a technique that determines when the sediments were last exposed to light. Some tools were buried 22,000...

"Wow," exclaims the visitor from New Zealand, a place, after all, with a human history shorter than most. For from a wooden walkway we’re gazing down at an archaeological site of giddying age. Built about 9000 BC, it’s more than twice as old as Stonehenge or the Pyramids, predating the discovery of metals, pottery or even the wheel. This is Göbekli Tepe in south-eastern Turkey, generally reckoned the most exciting and historically significant archaeological dig currently under way anywhere in the world, and there are neither queues nor tickets to get in. Wow for a number of reasons, then, though...

..... The capital "apparently indicates that an entire temple of castle is buried beneath it," the newspaper adds. However, when Rosental contacted the Israel Antiquities Authority to inform them of the find, the person he spoke to simply said – "Yaron, good for you. You found it, but we already are aware of it. Now forget about the whole thing and keep your mouth shut." Rosental said that he later found out that the IAA had known about the side for 18 months. He said that no digging has taken place since then, and that even steps like cordoning off...

Excavation near Stonehenge found evidence of a settlement dating back to 7,500 BC, revealing the site was occupied some 5,000 years earlier than previously thought. Working at Vespasian’s Camp in Amesbury, Wiltshire, less than a mile from the megalithic stones, a team led by archaeologist David Jacques of the Open University unearthed material which contradicted the general belief that no people settled there until as late as 2,500 BC. Indeed, carbon dating of the material revealed the existence of a semi-permanent settlement which was occupied from 7,500 to 4,700 BC. The dating showed that people were present during every millennium...

Thousands of Roman artefacts have been unearthed in an archaeological dig hailed as 'the most important excavation ever held in London'.Archaeologists have found coins, pottery, shoes, lucky charms and an amber Gladiator amulet which date back almost 2,000 years.Experts leading the excavation have also uncovered wooden structures from the 40s AD around 40ft beneath the ground.The site is just yards from the River Thames and alongside a huge building project for new offices on Queen Victoria Street in the heart of London's financial district.he Bloomberg Place construction siteArchaeologists work to unearth Roman artifacts. The discoveries have been so well preserved...

Israeli news outlets have ignored the imminent razing of an ancient Roman archaeological site by Hamas in Gaza, according to Israel Media Watch (IMW). The terror group is building a military training site for terrorist purposes. To this end, it is partially destroying the ancient Anthedon Harbor—which includes the ruins of a Roman temple and archaeological remains from the Persian, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine eras, and has been nominated as a World Heritage site. UN Watch has protested the silence of UNESCO on the matter, and IMW is asking why Israeli media is silent, too. No Hebrew language Israeli news...

The Real 'Hobbit' Had Larger Brain Than Thought Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor Date: 16 April 2013 Time: 07:01 PM ETThe hobbit, Homo floresiensis, lived on the island of Flores some 18,000 years ago, and now researchers have more evidence (its relatively large brain) the diminutive creature was a unique human species. The brain of the extinct "hobbit" was bigger than often thought, researchers say. These findings add to evidence that the hobbit was a unique species of humans after all, not a deformed modern human, scientists added. The 18,000-year-old fossils of the extinct type of human officially known as Homo...

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Dating back to the days of the Pharaoh Khufu, or Cheops in the Fourth Dynasty, the harbor dates back 4,500 years. The Great Pyramid of Giza serves as the tomb of Khufu, who died around 2566 B.C. The harbor was built on the Red Sea shore in the Wadi al-Jarf area, 112 miles south of Suez. The harbor was discovered by a French-Egyptian mission from the French Institute for Archaeological Studies. The site "predates by more than 1,000 years any other port structure known in the world," according to the mission's director, Pierre...

David Lentz from the University of Cincinnati focuses on Cerén, a farming village that was smothered under several metres of volcanic ash in the late sixth century.Lentz will present his research, “The Lost World of the Zapotitan Valley: Cerén and its Paleoecological Context,” at the 78th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, held on 3-7 April 2013 in Honolulu. More than 3,000 scientists from around the world attend the event to learn about research covering a broad range of topics and time periods.Cerén, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site known as Joya de Cerén, was discovered in El...

An ancient cave known as the 'gate to hell' in Greco-Roman mythology has reportedly been discovered in southwestern Turkey. The ruins of the "gate to hell," an ancient cave to the underworld in Greco-Roman mythology, have been discovered in Turkey, Italian archaeologists have announced. The cave, also known as Pluto's Gate, was uncovered in the ancient Phrygian city of Hierapolis, now known as the city of Pamukkale, in southwestern Turkey.

During archaeological excavations in the Kings' Valley in Upper Egypt a team of researchers from the University of Basel found one of the world's oldest ancient Egyptian sun dials. The team of the Egyptological Seminar under the direction of Prof. Susanne Bickel made the significant discovery while clearing the entrance to one of the tombs. During this year's excavations the researchers found a flattened piece of limestone (so-called Ostracon) on which a semicircle in black color had been drawn. The semicircle is divided into twelve sections of about 15 degrees each. A dent in the middle of the approximately 16...

A joint expedition of scientists led by Chapurukha M. Kusimba of The Field Museum and Sloan R. Williams of the University of Illinois at Chicago has unearthed a 600-year-old Chinese coin on the Kenyan island of Manda that shows trade existed between China and east Africa decades before European explorers set sail and changed the map of the world. The coin, a small disk of copper and silver with a square hole in the center so it could be worn on a belt, is called "Yongle Tongbao" and was issued by Emperor Yongle who reigned from 1403-1425AD during the Ming...

In October 2011, specialists from the Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern began investigation of the large granite slab weighing in at 7 tonnes. The glacial erratic measured 3 metres long, 2 metres wide and was nearly 1 metre thick – what they did not realise at first was that it still covered a grave belonging to a Neolithic community.The site was originally found when a farmer decided to try and remove the glacial boulder that he had to mow around when cutting grass in his field.The boulder is from the last glacial maximum – some 20,000 years ago...

Ice Age Lion Man is world’s earliest figurative sculpture • Work carved from mammoth ivory has been redated and 1,000 new fragments discovered—but it won’t make it to British Museum show The star exhibit initially promised for the British Museum’s “Ice Age Art” show will not be coming—but for a good reason. New pieces of Ulm’s Lion Man sculpture have been discovered and it has been found to be much older than originally thought, at around 40,000 years. This makes it the world’s earliest figurative sculpture. At the London exhibition, which opens on 7 February, a replica from the Ulm...

...So who concocted that first bowl of soup? Most sources state that soup making did not become commonplace until somewhere between 5,000 and 9,000 years ago. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America says, for example, "boiling was not a commonly used cooking technique until the invention of waterproof and heatproof containers about five thousand years ago." That's probably wrong — by at least 15,000 years. It now looks like waterproof and heatproof containers were invented much earlier than previously thought. Harvard University archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef and colleagues reported last year in Science on their finding of 20,000-year-old...

Along the ancient trade route known as the Silk Road, archaeologists have unearthed 102 tombs dating back some 1,300 years — and almost half of the tombs were for infants. The surprising discovery was made in remote western China, where construction workers digging for a hydroelectric project found the cluster of tombs. Each tomb contains wooden caskets covered in felt, inside of which are desiccated human remains, as well as copper trinkets, pottery and other items buried as sacrificial items, according to UPI. "The cluster covers an area of 1,500 square meters (1,794 square yards) on a 20-meter high (66...

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of more than 150 skulls from an ancient shrine in central Mexico—evidence of one of the largest mass sacrifices of humans in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. The skulls, many facing east, lay beneath a crude, slightly elevated mound of crushed stone on what was once an artificial island in a vast shallow lake, now completely dry. "The site is barely a bump on the horizon in the middle of nowhere," said lead archaeologist Christopher Morehart, of Georgia State University. And that was baffling. Previous evidence of such sacrifices came from grand pyramids in large ceremonial centers. The...

Ancient artifacts in a British museum have been reclassified as Roman toilet paper. Previously they were displayed as gaming pieces until researchers took another look at them. The artifacts are made of ceramic, and would have been rather - uncomfortable. LONDON, ENGLAND (Catholic Online) - Dr. Robert Symmons, curator of the Fisbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex, has announced that new research indicates the ceramic disks, once identified as gaming pieces, were used as sanitary devices, the ancient equivalent of toilet paper.....

(Phys.org)—As a young archaeologist, Peter Bogucki based his groundbreaking theory on the development of Western civilization on the most ancient of human technology, pottery. But it took some of the most modern developments in biochemistry—and 30 years —finally to confirm he was right. While working as director of studies at one of Princeton University's residential colleges in the 1980s, Bogucki theorized that the development of cheese-making in Europe—a critical indicator of an agricultural revolution—occurred thousands of years earlier than scientists generally believed. His insight, based on a study of perforated potsherds that Bogucki helped recover from dig sites in Poland,...

Exactly one hundred years ago, finds from an excavation in the south of present-day Iraq sent shockwaves around the academic world as archaeologists working at the site of the Mesopotamian city of Uruk, (modern day Warka in Iraq), brought to light the first known urban culture.Uruk the first city of Sumer For thousands of years, southern Mesopotamia was home to hunters, fishers and farmers exploiting the fertile soil and abundant wildlife, but by 3200 B.C., the largest settlement in southern Mesopotamia, if not the world, was Uruk: a true city dominated by monumental buildings of mudbrick decorated with painted clay...

During routine excavations at the dog catacomb in Saqqara necropolis, an excavation team led by Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo (AUC), and an international team of researchers led by Paul Nicholson of Cardiff University have uncovered almost 8 million animal mummies at the burial site. Studies on their bones revealed that those dogs are from different breeds but not accurately identified yet. “We are recording the animal bones and the mummification techniques used to prepare the animals,” Ikram said. Studies on the mummies, Ikram explains, revealed that some of them were old while the...

ARCHAEOLOGY is an inexact science, as Sir Arthur Evans, a flamboyant early practitioner, knew. However painstaking the digging process, an excavator can always promote an extravagant theory under the guise of interpreting the finds. As he started to unearth a prehistoric mound at Knossos in Crete at the turn of the 20th century, Evans put his imagination into high gear. He rebuilt parts of a 3,500-year-old palace in modernist style using cement and reconstructed fragmentary frescoes to suit his views on Bronze Age religion and politics.

(Abstract of article only): The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey 1Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Orient-Abteilung, Podbielskiallee 69–71, D-14195 Berlin, Germany (Email: odi@orient.dainst.de; jn@orient.dainst.de; kls@orient.dainst.de), 2Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Aas, Norway (Email: manfred.heun@umb.no), and 3Technische Universität München, Wissenschaftszentrum Weihenstephan, Weihenstephaner Steig 20, D-85354 Freising, Germany (Email: Martin.Zarnkow@wzw.tum.de)*Author for correspondence Göbekli Tepe is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of modern times, pushing back the origins of monumentality beyond the emergence of agriculture. We are pleased to present a summary of work in progress...

Archaeologists have discovered a 2,750-year-old temple along with a cache of sacred artifacts, providing rare insight into religious practices at the time, the Israeli Antiquities Authority announced Wednesday. The temple was uncovered west of Jerusalem, at the Tel Motza archaeological site, in preparation for work on Highway 1. Among the finds are pottery figurines, fragments of chalices and decorated pedestals, which indicate the site was the stomping ground of a ritual cult. "The ritual building at Tel Motza is an unusual and striking find, in light of the fact that there are hardly any remains of ritual buildings of the...

<p>Human skulls deliberately warped into strange, alien-like shapes have been unearthed in a 1,000-year-old cemetery in Mexico, researchers say.</p> <p>The practice of deforming skulls of children as they grew was common in Central America, and these findings suggest the tradition spread farther north than had been thought, scientists added.</p>

Forget old conspiracy theories about snake bites and fatal poisons. Egyptian King Ramesses III died after a brutal throat slashing, a new study says. The study provides the latest twist in a mystery that has long perplexed researchers. Did a venomous viper take him out? Poison? An assassination plot in a reign tainted by war? And if it were the latter, who did it? Researches say he died at the hands of a killer in a plot planned by one of his wives and a son who wanted to succeed him....

Wild elephants living in North China 3,000 years ago belonged to the extinct genus Palaeoloxodon, scientists say. They had previously been identified as Elephas maximus, the Asian elephant that still inhabits southern China. The findings suggest that Palaeloxodon survived a further 7,000 years than was thought. The team from China examined fossilised elephant teeth and ancient elephant-shaped bronzes for the study. The research, published in Quaternary International was carried out by a group of scientists from Shaanxi Normal University and Northwest University in Xi'an and The Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Beijing.....

The story of Noah's Ark and the Great Flood is one of the most famous from the Bible, and now an acclaimed underwater archaeologist thinks he has found proof that the biblical flood was actually based on real events. In an interview with Christiane Amanpour for ABC News, Robert Ballard, one of the world's best-known underwater archaeologists, talked about his findings. His team is probing the depths of the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey in search of traces of an ancient civilization hidden underwater since the time of Noah. Tune in to Christiane Amanpour's two-part ABC News special,...

Archaeologist, William Mills, dug up a treasure-trove of 2000 year old carved stone pipes in the early 1900s and was the first to dig the Native American site, called Tremper Mound, in southern Ohio.When he inspected the pipes, he made a reasonable, but unverified, assumption. The pipes looked as if they had been carved from local stone, and so he said they were. That assumption, first published in 1916, has been repeated in scientific publications to this day, but according to a new analysis, Mills got it wrong.Researchers tested the mineralogical profiles of stone from sites across the upper Midwest...

An Italian study carried out on the Basilica’s wooden beams has revealed that the cedar was carved between the 6th and 7th centuries In the next few days, as is the case every year, all eyes will be on the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem. But the deeper the studies on this ancient church go, the more surprises it seems to have in store. This is what transpires from a report published yesterday in the last edition of the Journal of Cultural Heritage and on Terrasanta.net.The report presents the results of a long study carried out on the Basilica’s...

Close to the small Mexican village of Onavas, south Sonora, archaeologists have uncovered the first pre-Hispanic cemetery of that area, dating to around 1,000 years ago.Infant burial with shell bracelet and earrings. Image: INAH A unique burial ground The burial ground consists of 25 individuals; 13 have intentional cranial deformation and five also have dental mutilation, cultural practices which are similar to those of pre-Hispanic groups in southern Sinaloa and northern Nayarit, but until now, have not been seen in Sonora.Individual buried with a turtle shell placed over the abdomen. Image: INAH Some of the individuals were wearing ornaments such...

A team of archaeologists have unearthed additional evidence of what may have been Europe's first civilization at a site located near the town of Pazardzhik in southern Bulgaria. Known as Yunatsite, it is a Tell (mound containing archaeological remains) about 110 meters in diameter and 12 meters high, rising above fields next to a small Bulgarian village by the same name. The Tell contains remains of an urbanized settlement dated at its earliest to the early fifth millenium BC.Directed by Yavor Boyadzhiev of the National Institute of Archaeology and Museums, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, excavators have unearthed artifacts such...

Traces of dairy fat in ancient ceramic fragments suggest that people have been making cheese in Europe for up to 7,500 years. In the tough days before refrigerators, early dairy farmers probably devised cheese-making as a way to preserve, and get the best use out of, milk from the cattle that they had begun to herd. Peter Bogucki, an archaeologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, was in the 1980s among the first to suspect that cheese-making might have been afoot in Europe as early as 5,500 bc. He noticed that archaeologists working at ancient cattle-rearing sites in what is...

Skeletal remains in an island cave in Favignana, Italy, reveal that modern humans first settled in Sicily around the time of the last ice age and despite living on Mediterranean islands, ate little seafood. The research is published November 28 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marcello Mannino and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany. Genetic analysis of the bones discovered in caves on the Egadi islands provides some of the first mitochondrial DNA data available for early humans from the Mediterranean region, a crucial piece of evidence in ancestry analysis. This analysis reveals...

The first findings of the most detailed study yet by two British archaeologists into the Nazca Lines – enigmatic drawings created between 2,100 and 1,300 years ago in the Peruvian desert – have been published in the latest issue of the journal Antiquity. As part of a five-year investigation, Dr Nicholas Saunders of the University of Bristol's Department of Archaeology and Anthropology and Professor Clive Ruggles of the University of Leicester walked 1,500 km of desert in southern Peru, tracing the lines and geometric figures created by the Nasca people between 100 BC and AD 700. The confusing palimpsest of...

Archaeologist suing makers of Indiana Jones, claiming their Crystal Skull is too accurate Can a fantastical movie be too historically accurate? Dr. Jaime Awe, director of the Institute of Archeology of Belize, has filed suit against Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures claiming that the prop skull from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull bears a striking resemblance to one of the "real" Crystal Skulls originally discovered in Belize. So why is that a problem? Well, according to Awe, the skull was stolen, and the filmmakers are profitting off of ill-gotten goods. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of...

Here's a link to a page with a nice video from Nova, about Viking swords, for all you Viking history buffs out there... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-viking-sword.html

Drought May Have Killed Sumerian Language Tia Ghose LiveScience Staff Writer Date: 04 December 2012 Time: 11:35 AM ETThe ancient Sumerians invented cuneiform, shown here on a clay tablet documenting barley rations issued monthly to adults and children. The language may have died out as a result of a 200-year drought 4,200 years ago. CREDIT: Public Domain SAN FRANCISCO — A 200-year-long drought 4,200 years ago may have killed off the ancient Sumerian language, one geologist says. Because no written accounts explicitly mention drought as the reason for the Sumerian demise, the conclusions rely on indirect clues. But several pieces...

Archaeologists have found the remains of an ancient imperial palace near the tomb of emperor Qin Shi Huang, home of the famous terracotta army, China's state media reported on Sunday. The palace is the largest complex discovered so far in the emperor's sprawling 22 square-mile (56 square-km) second-century BC mausoleum, which lies on the outskirts of Xi'an, an ancient capital city in central China, an associate researcher at the Shaanxi provincial institute of archaeology told China's official news wire Xinhua. It is an estimated 690 metres long and 250 metres wide – about a quarter of the size of the...

Between 2007 and 2012 a team led by Dr Lindy Crewe from the University of Manchester have been excavating a Cypriot Bronze Age site at the south-western settlement of Kissonerga-Skalia near Paphos.Excavation of a malting kiln The team excavated a two by two metre domed mud-plastered structure and have now demonstrated by means of experimental archaeology and various other evidence that it was used as a kiln to dry malt for beer making three-and-a half-thousand years ago.The form of this construction suggests that the most likely function was as a drying-kiln, and that one of the primary uses of this...

Pyongyang, November 29 (KCNA) -- Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668). The lair is located 200 meters from the Yongmyong Temple in Moran Hill in Pyongyang City. A rectangular rock carved with words "Unicorn Lair" stands in front of the lair. The carved words are believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392). Jo Hui Sung, director of the Institute, told KCNA: "Korea's history books deal with the unicorn, considered to...

Greenland’s Viking settlers, the Norse, disappeared suddenly and mysteriously from Greenland about 500 years ago. Natural disasters, climate change and the inability to adapt have all been proposed as theories to explain their disappearance. But now a Danish-Canadian research team has demonstrated the Norse society did not die out due to an inability to adapt to the Greenlandic diet: an isotopic analysis of their bones shows they ate plenty of seals.“Our analysis shows that the Norse in Greenland ate lots of food from the sea, especially seals,” says Jan Heinemeier, Institute of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University. “Our analysis shows...

Tel Aviv University researchers have uncovered a unique 11th-century BCE sacred compound at the site of Tel Beth-Shemesh, an ancient village that resisted the aggressive expansion of neighboring Philistines. The newly discovered sacred complex is comprised of an elevated, massive circular stone structure and an intricately constructed building characterized by a row of three flat, large round stones. Co-directors of the dig Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman of TAU's Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology say that this temple complex is unparalleled, possibly connected to an early Israelite cult — and provides remarkable new evidence of the...

Israeli paleographer Ada Yardeni has recently identified 50 Dead Sea scrolls found near Qumran in Israel as having been penned by the same scribe, a scribe who also penned scrolls that have been found at the Herodian mountain-top fortress of Masada, where Jewish rebel zealots made their last suicidal stand against the Romans in 73 A.D.The subject scrolls were previously discovered in six different caves in the area of the Qumran site. In an article authored by Sidnie White Crawford and published in the November/December 2012 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Crawford writes that documents penned by the same scribe and found...