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...Located in Marliens, a commune in eastern France, the site has a large bowtie-shaped structure, whose middle sports a circular construction measuring 36 feet (11 meters) in diameter. This center circlet is interconnected by a 26-foot-long (8 m) horseshoe-shaped structure on one side and a jug-handle-shaped feature on the other, according to a translated statement from the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), which carried out the excavations...Based on the plethora of artifacts found there — including a bundle containing seven flint arrowheads, two protective armbands worn by archers, a flint lighter and a copper-alloy dagger — archaeologists...

Archaeologists working with Norway’s Secrets of the Ice program recently got a shock when a arrow shaft they had previously dated to the Iron Age turned out to be some 4,000 years old....after the researchers cleaned the glacial silt off one end, they found a notch befitting a stone arrowhead and not an iron one. The team co-directed by Lars Holger Pilø – an archaeologist with the local Department of Cultural Heritage – concluded that the arrow dated to the Stone Age, pending radiocarbon dating.Whatever the results, the arrow joins a wealth recovered by Secrets of the Ice, which has...

A new paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford Univeristy Press, uncovers well-preserved microbiomes from two 4,000 year old teeth in a limestone cave in Ireland. These contained bacteria that cause gum disease, as well as the first high quality ancient genome from S. mutans, an oral bacterium that is one of the major causes of tooth decay.These discoveries allowed the researchers to assess the impact of past dietary changes on the oral microbiome across millennia, including major changes coinciding with the popularization of sugar and industrialization. The teeth, both derived from the same Bronze Age man, also...

Archaeologists from the Red River Archaeology Group came across the complex while working on a Barratt and David Wilson Homes housing development at Brookside Meadows in Grove near Wantage, Oxfordshire.The site sits on a landscape inhabited since the Bronze Age which has been described as "artefact-rich".The group's project officer said it was "an important centre of activities for a long time".The archaeologists said the villa complex was richly decorated with painted plaster and mosaics.Finds also include a monumental hall-like "aisled building", which is a type of structure that seems to date from the late 1st Century AD.This building is immediately...

A burial monument with human remains thought to be about 4,500 years old has been discovered in East Yorkshire.Parts of a Roman road and a burnt mound were also discovered during a £5m project to build a 5.2km (3.2 miles) sewer near Full Sutton.Ecus Archaelogy, working on the site for Yorkshire Water, said the three sites give a glimpse into the prehistoric and early historic past of the area.The analysis stage of the project is yet to start and the sewer is now being laid.The small circular burial monument was discovered in the vicinity of Full Sutton with the human...

The glass used to create beads discovered at a prehistoric settlement dubbed "Britain's Pompeii" was probably made in Iran, analysis has revealed.The finds were among a wealth of well-preserved items unearthed at a burnt-out 3,000-year-old village at a quarry in Whittlesey, near Peterborough.Amber, shale, siltstone, faience and tin beads were also discovered...The remains of a settlement of about 10 circular wooden houses on stilts built above a river was discovered by the Cambridge Archaeological Unit between 2015 and 2016.Believed to be home to 50 to 60 people, the cause of the fire that destroyed it in 850BC is unknown. The...

Most of us are familiar with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, which destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Stabiae. But did you know that this was not the first time that Vesuvius unleashed its fury on the surrounding lands? Centuries before, around 2000 BC, another massive eruption buried a Bronze Age village in Italy, preserving it in volcanic ash and mud. This village is known as Afragola.In this video, we will show you how archaeologists and scientists uncovered the secrets of this fascinating site.You will discover how ancient plants helped reveal the season of...

A copper dagger more than 4,000 years old was found in a forest near the town of Jarosław on the San River in south-eastern Poland. This discovery is the oldest dagger made of metal found in the Podkarpackie Voivodeship.In the 3rd millennium BC, objects made of copper were extremely rare in the area, Dr Elżbieta Sieradzka-Burghardt, an archaeologist from the Jarosław museum, told PAP.This valuable object, dating back over 4,000 years, was discovered last November by Piotr Gorlach of the Jarosław Historical and Exploration Association, who – with the permission of the Podkarpacie Regional Historical Monument Conservator in Przemyśl –...

...The Portable Antiquities Scheme is a project managed by the British Museum to address the lack of provision for metal detectorists (and the general public) to be able to notify relevant authorities of archaeological discoveries and document objects in a curated database...In the latest annual report that covers 2022, the PAS has documented 53,490 new submissions, 94% of which have been submitted by metal detectorists, and of which 1,384 have been reported as treasure under the Treasure Act 1996.Bronze Age: 1,210 objects were recorded, which include a stone wrist-guard, a gold hoard containing a decorated bracelet and two gold strips...

The rise of farming in late Stone Age Europe was no smooth transition from hunter-gatherer lifestyles but a bloody takeover that saw nomadic populations wiped out by farmer-settlers in a few generations, a new study has found.In fact, twice in just a thousand years, the population of southern Scandinavia was entirely replaced by newcomers to the area, whose remains bear next to no trace of their predecessors in DNA profiles, analyzed by an international team of researchers."This transition has previously been presented as peaceful," explains study author and palaeoecologist Anne Birgitte Nielsen of Lund University...Using a technique called shotgun sequencing,...

A study published in the journal Prehistory Works, indicates that two objects sampled from the Villena Treasure were smithed using meteoric iron...The Villena Treasure is one of the most important Bronze Age hoard finds in the Iberian Peninsula, discovered by José María Soler in 1963 in Villena, Spain. Archaeologists uncovered a collection of bowls, bottles, and bracelets, which were ornately crafted from gold, silver, iron and amber.Iron was considered a precious metal before the advent of iron smelting, where meteoric iron was the only source of iron metal used to make jewellery, tools, and weapons during the Bronze Age.Iron sourced...

Identifying an archaeological site with biblical stories is often circumstantial. In this case, archaeologists found the biblical archaeology equivalent of the Holy Grail: inscriptions discovered within a few hundred meters from the site, albeit from the 1st century B.C.E., reading "boundary of Gezer" in Hebrew, among other things. But the city's story begins thousands of years earlier...Later excavations in the 1960s and '70s on behalf of Hebrew Union College discerned 26 strata, often with one built upon the last. They range in date from the Chalcolithic period (4th millennium B.C.E.) to the Early Roman period (late 1st century B.C.E).The most...

The remnants of a bronze age tomb once thought to have been destroyed and lost to history have been discovered in County Kerry on the Atlantic coast of Ireland.The tomb, known locally as Altóir na Gréine – the sun altar – stood for approximately 4,000 years on a hill outside the village of Ballyferriter on the Dingle peninsula before vanishing in the mid-19th century...Georgiana Chatterton, an English aristocrat and traveller, had visited the site and sketched the monument in 1838, but 14 years later an antiquarian named Richard Hitchcock reported that it had been broken up and carried away, presumably...

Chisel marks on a stone uncovered in Rupinpiccolo protohistoric hill fort from north-eastern Italy were suggested to be a representation of the night sky (Bernardini et al. 2022 Documenta Praehistorica XLIX). The patterns of the 29 marks are analyzed here to establish if they reproduce popular stellar asterisms. Nine marks are found to match the Tail of Scorpius and five the Orion's Belt, together with Rigel and Betelgeuse. Nine marks are found in the approximate position of the Pleiades showing some match with the cluster members. On the back side, 5 marks possibly reproduce Cassiopeia. One mark slightly North of...

Archaeologists have found a massive ancient fortification enclosing the Khaybar Oasis in the North Arabian Desert. It is one of the two largest fortifications in Saudi Arabia.Oases in the region have been settled by human populations for 4,000–5,000 years. An oasis is a small patch of vegetation in the desert. Fed by sources of freshwater such as underground rivers and high water tables mean these areas can become vibrant, lush sanctuaries for plant and animal life.Human-built aquifers and channels can help irrigate these areas making them suitable for long-term settlement...Fortifications at Khaybar once stretched for 14.5 km and were between...

If two persons are biologically related, they share long stretches of DNA that they co-inherited from their recent common ancestor. These almost identically shared stretches of genomes are called IBD ("Identity by Descent") segments. Up to the sixth-degree relatives—such as second to third cousins would be, or a great great great great grandparent—the two relatives even share multiple IBD segments. Personal genomics companies such as 23andme or Ancestry detect those segments routinely in DNA of their customers, and use this signal to distinctively reveal biological relatives in their databases.In a new study published in Nature Genetics, researchers from the Max...

...Archaeologists have described the vessel, which is thought to date back to around 900BC, as being a "bulk carrier" of its age. The copper and tin would have been used for making bronze -- the primary product of the period which was used in the manufacture of not only weapons, but also tools, jewellery, ornaments and other items. Archaeologists believe the copper -- and possibly the tin -- was being imported into Britain and originated in a number of different countries throughout Europe, rather than from a single source, demonstrating the existence of a complex network of trade routes across...

Last year the project uncovered the remains of a large timber Royal Hall, confirming the location as a royal settlement of the East Anglian Kings.This year's excavations also uncovered evidence of metalworking associated with royal occupation, including a mould used for casting decorative horse harnesses similar to that known from the burial ground at Sutton Hoo.The royal compound was found to have been more than twice the size than previously thought at around 15 hectares, which is equivalent to the size of 20 football pitches. The compound was part of a wider settlement complex covering around 50 hectares which is...

Satellite imagery has revealed a network of more than 100 Bronze Age structures hidden in the Serbian plains.Archaeologists first noticed the remnants of the more than 3,000-year-old enclosures in 2015 while reviewing Google Earth photos of a 93-mile stretch (150 kilometer) of wilderness along Serbia's Tisza River, according to a study published Nov. 10 in the journal PLOS One...Previously, this area, known as the Pannonian Plain, was thought to be a hinterland not used for Bronze Age settlements. But now, researchers think that this is just one example of the many settlements found across Europe that are part of an...

For a team of archaeologists digging in southwest Spain, the discovery of a Bronze/Iron Age stela—a funerary stone slab with carvings depicting an important individual—would have been exciting enough...The excavation, taking place in the 3000-year-old funerary complex of Las Capellanías, in Cañaveral de León, Spain, uncovered a stela depicting a human figure with detailed face, hands and feet, a headdress, necklace, two swords and male genitals.Prior to this discovery, archaeologists had interpreted features such as a headdress and necklace on a stela as representing a female form, while the inclusion of weaponry such as swords would be interpreted as male...