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One of the UK's largest hauls of Iron Age gold coins has been found in Suffolk. The 824 so-called staters were found in a broken pottery jar buried in a field near Wickham Market using a metal detector. Jude Plouviez, of the Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, said the coins dated from 40BC to AD15. They are thought to have been minted by predecessors of the Iceni Queen Boudicca. Ms Plouviez said their value when in circulation had been estimated at a modern equivalent of between £500,000 and £1m, but they were likely to be worth less than that now....

BASRA — Iraqi Security Forces recently uncovered hundreds of historical artifacts during two raids in northern Basra. The 228 ancient artifacts included Sumerian and Babylonian sculpture, gold jewelry and other items from ancient Mesopotamia.“This is my favorite item,” said Iraqi Col. Ali Sabah, commander of the Basra Emergency Battalion that led the operation, holding a piece of gold jewelry. “It’s gold from the Babylon ages and about 6,000 years old. It doesn’t have a price.”“I’m very happy because this is my civilization’s heritage,” he said.The Basra Emergency Battalion led raid operated from tips that smugglers intended to remove the...

Dignitaries stop at the Ctesiphon Arch during a visit in late October. Efforts are underway to preserve it and other historical artifacts in Iraq. Photo by Multi-National Division - Center. CAMP VICTORY — Overshadowed by years of tyranny and armed conflict, the country of Iraq hides many signs of what it once was – the cradle of civilization. Sitting in varying states of decay, or even beneath layers of earth, historical locations and artifacts recall the significance that Iraq and her people have played on the history of all mankind. In the town that housed one of the Seven Ancient...

A 2500 year old Persian treasure dubbed the world's 'first bill of human rights' has been branded a piece of shameless 'propaganda' by German historians. The Cyrus cylinder, which is held by the British Museum, is a legacy of Cyrus the Great - the Persian emperor famed for freeing the Jews of ancient Babylon after conquering the city in 539 BC. A copy of the cylinder, which is covered in cuneiform script supposed to detail the ancient charter of rights, also hangs next to the Security Council Chamber in the United Nations headquarters in New York, where it is held...

Jordan handed over nearly 2,500 stolen ancient artifacts to Iraq in a ceremony in Amman on Sunday. The repatriation is latest step in recovering about 15,000 priceless artifacts that were smuggled out of the country by looters during the chaos following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and have been turning up at art auctions around the world. Many were taken from the national museum in Baghdad, and thousands more were looted from archeolgoical sites. At the ceremony, Maha Khatib, Jordan's minister of tourism, presented the pieces to her Iraqi counterpart, Mohammed Abbas Oreibi. Oreibi told reporters that the...

Ancient stone tools discovered in South Carolina Finds at Savannah River site could rewrite America's history By LIZ MITCHELL McClatchy NewspapersPublished on: 06/17/08 HILTON HEAD, S.C. — A local man has unearthed two ancient stone tools in an archaeological dig in Allendale County, S.C., a rare find that could provide more information about how early Americans lived. And if more evidence proves the artifact is a new type of tool and one archaeologists haven't found before, it could be named after Matthew Carey of Hilton Head Island. The 22-year-old University of South Carolina anthropology major volunteered at the Topper Site...

Historic ‘name trees’ bore thousands of carvingsThe names “Thomas and Dorothy” were carved in the bark of one trunk. Another said “Bob and Carma”. Other trees were marked with soldiers’ home states - Iowa, Maine or Alabama - and several bore hearts and the names or initials of a wife or girlfriend. The beech trees of Saint Pierre de Varengeville-Duclair forest bore a poignant testimony to the D-Day landings for more than six decades. Thousands of American soldiers stationed there after the liberation of Normandy spent their spare hours with a knife or bayonet creating a lasting reminder of their...

Tse-whit-zen artifacts languish in storage By Jonathan MartinSeattle Times staff reporter An arrowhead created by a Lower Elwha Klallam tribal member. One of the Pacific Northwest's most astonishing archaeological finds in a generation has languished for more than a year, lingering on metal shelves in a Seattle warehouse, unseen by the public and unexamined by scientists. No one questions the discoveries — artifacts from a 2,700-year-old Native American village excavated from the Port Angeles waterfront amid great public interest — should be exhibited, analyzed and celebrated. But the 900 boxes of artifacts — such things as spindle whorls carved from...

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi National Museum is welcoming home 701 artifacts stolen during the looting after Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003. Syrian authorities turned over items ranging from golden necklaces to clay pots that were seized by traffickers in the neighboring country. The antiquities were displayed in a ceremony Sunday at the Baghdad museum. Iraqi officials say Syria is the first country to hand over a large quantity of stolen antiquities. They hope others will follow its lead as Iraq struggles to restore its rich cultural heritage after five years of war. Museums were pillaged of treasures in the chaos...

This elegant gold necklace looks as if it was only made yesterday. In fact the nine inch necklace is four thousand years old and marks the oldest known worked gold artifact ever uncovered in the Americas, also representing the earliest evidence of an elite emerging among the simple people who lived there. Is this gold necklace the first evidence of elite society in the Americas In short, it marks the very early steps towards the appearance of royalty in the region, along with politics and luxury. The nine bead necklace, found near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru, is described by...

Authorities Raid California Museums By GREG RISLING LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal agents raided several Southern California museums on Thursday in search of Southeast Asian antiquities believed to have been illegally obtained, smuggled into the U.S. and donated so collectors could claim fraudulent tax deductions. Agents also investigated American Indian artifacts at one museum. Search warrants were executed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena and the Mingei International Museum in San Diego, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Authorities said no arrests...

Tablets that may reveal El Niño secrets are feared lost in Iraq By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent 09 June 2003 The secrets of El Niño, one of the most mysterious and destructive weather systems, could be unlocked by hundreds of thousands of ancient clay tablets now feared lost or damaged in the chaos of Iraq. Researchers believe the tablets, written using a cuneiform text, one of the earliest types of writing, form the world's oldest records of climate change and could give vital clues to understanding El Niño and global warming. Academics are demanding that ministers act to protect the...

RALEIGH - Harlan “Carolina” Jones was commissioned by Biblical Archeology Review in 1977 to find the long-lost Ark of the Covenant. Three decades of frustration could have been avoided had Craig Newmark, then a 24-year-old fratboy at Wofford College, hurried up and started his nifty Web site for classified ads—Craigslist.org. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited and all,” Jones said. “But I feel like a dang fool.” Jones was searching on Raleigh Craigslist for a new Husky toolbox for his pickup truck when he clicked on the following ad: “Funky storage box. Used. Free jar, stick and a couple of...

JERUSALEM – Islamic authorities using heavy machinery to dig on the Temple Mount – Judaism's holiest site – have been caught red-handed destroying Temple-era antiquities and what's believed to be a section of an outer wall of the Second Jewish Temple.

It's one of Minnesota's greatest mysteries. It's something that puts settlers in America well before Columbus. A Minnesota geologist thinks the controversial Kensington Runestone is the real thing and there is evidence that he says backs up the theory. The Kensington Runestone is a rock found near Alexandria a century ago. It's inscription speaking of Norwegians here in 1362. It begs the question. Were Vikings exploring our land more than 100 years before Columbus? Or is it just an elaborate hoax? New research shows that the stone is genuine and there's hidden code that may prove it. It contains carved...

Ooparts ? What are Ooparts? That stands for Out of Place Artifacts. Things that show up where they shouldn't, a piece of gold chain found in a coal seam, what appears to be a sparkplug embedded in rock that is thousands of years old and what appears to be a bullet hole in the skull of a mastodon. These things are ooparts. A Gold Thread Workmen quarrying stone near the River Tweed below Rutherford, Scotland in 1844, found a piece of gold thread embedded in the rock of the quarry eight feet below ground level. A small piece of the...

Artifacts could be from early galleon Mon Feb 26, 11:42 PM ET MEXICO CITY - Archeologists said Monday that porcelain plates and other artifacts found along the Baja California coast could be from the wreckage of a Spanish galleon that sailed between the Philippines and Mexico hundreds of years ago. Seals and other markings on some of the estimated 1,000 fragments of porcelain plates found at the site indicate they were made in China in the late 1500s, said archaeologist Luz Maria Mejia of the National Institute of Anthropology and History. The site, near the port of Ensenada about 50...

Some of the artefacts confiscated may be up to one million years old French customs officials say they have seized more than 650 ancient artefacts smuggled from Mali in one of the largest such finds at a Paris airport. Described as an "archaeological treasure", the objects were thought to be on their way to private US buyers. Experts say most of the items are from the Neolithic period, but some may be up to one million years old. The artefacts are thought to have been taken from archaeological sites on the edge of the Sahara desert. The 669 items...

Shortly before Christmas, electrician Pio DiPofi pried open a 114-year-old box kneeler that ran for 200 feet along the balcony rail of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in the Strip District. In the hollow where he planned to run wiring for the church's ongoing renovation he saw dirt, soot and something more colorful. He reached in and carefully pulled out two very old holy cards -- images of Jesus and the saints that are often used in Catholic prayer. "When I looked at them, I was amazed," he said. Items found inside the 114-year-old box kneeler include a torn prayer card...

Railway construction unearths ancient artifacts in Germany By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff | January 21, 2007 COLOGNE, Germany -- Genialinius Gennatus was one fine duck hunter. Alerts In the third century , he recorded his prowess in high Latin on a stone tablet that he dedicated to Jupiter. That and a hefty donation probably ensured that the tablet won display in the temple to the Roman god in the settlement then called Colonia. Five or six centuries later, Cologne's early Christians, perhaps offended by the tablet dedicated to a pantheist god, chucked it into the silting channel between the Rhine...