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A rocky islet and a nearby hillside have yielded evidence of one of Greece's oldest and most enigmatic ritual sites. Imported stones and fragmented marble statuettes show that Dhaskalio and Kavos were "a symbolic central place for the Early Bronze Age" in the Aegean, according to Professor Colin Renfrew. Kavos is a stony, scrub-covered slope on the Cycladic island of Keros. Forty-five years ago Professor Renfrew, then a PhD student at Cambridge, found extensive looting there, with fragments of marble bowls and the famous Cycladic folded-arm figurines scattered across the surface. The date of the Dhaskalio Kavos site, based on...

ATHENS, Greece - British and Greek archaeologists are preparing a major excavation on a tiny Greek island to try to explain why it produced history's largest collection of Cycladic flat-faced marble figurines. Artwork from barren Keros inspired such artists as Pablo Picasso and Henry Moore but also attracted ruthless looters. Now experts are seeking insight into the island's possible role as a major religious center of the enigmatic Cycladic civilization some 4,500 years ago. Excavations will run April through June. "Keros is one of the riddles of prehistoric archaeology," said Peggy Sotirakopoulou, curator of the Cycladic collection at the Museum...

And although the burial mound is much older than the Druids — who lived about 2,000 years ago, if they existed at all — the excavations have cast new light on the ancient inhabitants of the island of Anglesey. Overlooking the Irish Sea from the northwest corner of Wales, Anglesey is dotted with numerous Neolithic and Bronze Age stone monuments. The most famous is the 5,000-year-old passage tomb of Bryn Celli Ddu (Welsh for "the mound in the dark grove"), which has an entrance passage that aligns with the rising midsummer sun. It was archaeologically excavated in 1928 and 1929,...

Carrowmore in the largest cemetery of megalithic tombs in Ireland, with 5,500-year-old passage tombs dating from 3,600 BC. Archaeologists Dr Marion Dowd and Dr James Bonsall directed the excavation of a site that was formerly known as a barrow. Barrows are circular earthen monuments surrounded by a circular ditch. These sites typically date to the Bronze Age and Iron Age, ranging from between 4,000 and 1,500 years old. The excavation has revealed that some unexpected results – that the monument isn’t a barrow at all... The team found that the circular ditch surrounded a central raised area that consisted of...

Must Farm is located within the silts of a slow-flowing freshwater river, with stilted structures built to elevate the living quarters above the water. This palaeochannel (dating from 1700-100 BC) was active for centuries prior to the construction of Must Farm (approx. 1100-800 cal BC), and a causeway was built across the river... Excavations between 2009 and 2012 revealed the remains of nine logboats in the palaeochannel, in addition to fish weirs and fish traps - further evidence of the long history of occupation in the landscape. The Must Farm houses are the 'most completely preserved prehistoric domestic structures found...

A 3,300-year-old treasure trove of gold found in northern Germany has stumped German archeologists. One theory suggests that traders transported it thousands of miles from a mine in Central Asia, but other experts are skeptical. Archeologists in Germany have an unlikely new hero: former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. They have nothing but praise for the cigar-smoking veteran Social Democratic politician. Why? Because it was Schröder who, together with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, pushed through a plan to pump Russian natural gas to Western Europe. For that purpose, an embankment 440 kilometers (275 miles) long and up to 30 meters (100 feet)...

Charred grains of barley, millet and wheat deposited nearly 5,000 years ago at campsites in the high plains of Kazakhstan show that nomadic sheepherders played a surprisingly important role in the early spread of domesticated crops throughout a mountainous east-west corridor along the historic Silk Road... "Ancient wheat and broomcorn millet, recovered in nomadic campsites in Kazakhstan, show that prehistoric herders in Central Eurasia had incorporated both regional crops into their economy and rituals nearly 5,000 years ago, pushing back the chronology of interaction along the territory of the 'Silk Road' more than 2,000 years," Frachetti said... ...several strains of...

A team of marine archaeologists has uncovered a 3,600-year-old shipwreck in the Mediterranean, just off the coast of Antalya, Turkey. The ship, believed to have been a merchant vessel sailing from Cyprus, may be the oldest ever discovered, according to Haaretz... Based on its position and the large cargo of copper ingots found inside and around the wreck, it is likely to have been a trading ship, ferrying goods from Cyprus to the Aegean region. Although the ship is in very poor condition, and the hull has been almost completely destroyed, the bulk of the ship, together with its precious...

Over 100 years of excavations on Crete have exposed elegant Minoan frescoes that once adorned the walls of the island’s Bronze Age palaces. This distinctively colorful Aegean art style flourished in the Middle Bronze Age (1750-1550 B.C.). The nearby inhabitants of Akrotiri, a city on the Cycladic island of Thera (modern Santorini), painted numerous artworks in the style of the Minoan frescoes before the island was decimated by a volcanic eruption in the late 17th or 16th century B.C. Until recently, there was no archaeological evidence of Minoan frescoes beyond the islands of the Aegean. Art exhibiting Aegean characteristics has...

Since Colchis was famous in antiquity for gold and precious metal -- it's where the Greek hero Jason went to grab the legendary Golden Fleece -- you'd be wearing gold-spangled robes while pouring and drinking your famous Colchian wine from gold or silver vessels. You'd also be so rich you could afford to bury your wine service with you... A fascinating exhibition, "Wine, Worship & Sacrifice: The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani" at the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., through Feb. 24, gives a thrilling image of the plenty that nobility enjoyed in that far corner of the ancient...

Public release date: 20-Nov-2007 Contact: George Hunka ghunka@aftau.org 212-742-9070 American Friends of Tel Aviv University Digging biblical history, or the end of the world Professor Israel Finkelstein Some come to dig the Tel Aviv University-directed archeological site at Tel Megiddo because they are enchanted by ancient stories of King Solomon. Others come because they believe in a New Testament prophecy that the mound of dirt will be the location of a future Judgment Day apocalyptic battle. Hence the second, rather more chilling name for the site: "Armageddon." Tel Megiddo has been the subject of a number of decisive battles in...

It argues that the "palaces" could more likely be "temples" rather than residential buildings. For sure, archaeologists are quick to point out that certain parts of the palaces definitely had a religious function. But some go further. Archaeologist Oswald Spengler stated in the 1930s that these "palaces" were temples for the dead. His opinion was not taken seriously, as it went against the accepted belief. Wunderlich continued where Spengler had stopped. Both noted that the state of the palaces was particularly bizarre. Thousands of people are believed to have roamed the corridors of the Palace of Knossos, but the staircases...

The remains of an ancient Greek cargo ship that sank more than 2,300 years ago have been uncovered with a deep-sea robot, archaeologists announced today. The ship was carrying hundreds of ceramic jars of wine and olive oil and went down off Chios and the Oinoussai islands in the eastern Aegean Sea sometime around 350 B.C. Archeologists speculate that a fire or rough weather may have sunk the ship. The wreckage was found submerged beneath 200 feet (60 meters) of water. The researchers hope that the shipwreck will provide clues about the trade network that existed between the ancient Greek...

A team of archaeologists digging at Tel-Habuwa, near the town of Qantara East and three kilometres east of the Suez Canal... chanced upon a cachet of limestone reliefs bearing names of two royal personalities and two seated statues of differing sizes. The larger statue is made of limestone and belongs to a yet unidentified personage, but from its size and features archaeologists believe that it could be a statue of Horus, the god of the city. In 2001 archaeologists unearthed remains of a mud-brick temple dedicated to this deity. The second is a headless limestone statue inscribed on the back...

The language of the southwestern littoral of Anatolia - which includes Arzawa - was Luwiyan, which, like Kneshian, was a member of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family. For diplomatic correspondence, however, Arzawa used Kneshian - even when writing to the Egyptian king! It appears that this diplomatic faux pas was a result of Arzawa's provincial character; Kneshian was the language required to deal with the other states of Asia Minor, and especially with Hattusas.

Unearthed: the humble origins of world diplomacy By David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent 19 January 2003 Archaeologists have discovered evidence of an invasion of the Middle East by one of the world's first superpowers, which destroyed much of the region 33 centuries ago. Under the ruins of a 3,800-year-old royal palace in western Syria they have found part of an ancient diplomatic and administrative library, the most important archaeological discovery of its kind for more than 20 years. Accounts on clay tablets describe the region's conquest by one of the Bronze Age's superpowers, the Hittite Empire, in 1340BC. This helped to...

Archaeological evidence suggested that 25 individuals whose remains were found in a burial pit near a Crusader castle near Sidon, Lebanon, were warriors who died in battle in the 1200s. Based on that, Tyler-Smith, Haber, and their colleagues conducted genetic analyses of the remains and were able to sequence the DNA of nine Crusaders, revealing that three were Europeans, four were Near Easterners, and two individuals had mixed genetic ancestry... ...when the researchers sequenced the DNA of people living in Lebanon 2,000 years ago during the Roman period, they found that today's Lebanese population is actually more genetically similar to...

In two previous studies, researchers analyzed isotopes (an element that has a different number of neutrons than normal in its nucleus) in the women's remains, so they could piece together where the women had lived. But now, new research finds that these analyses were likely contaminated by modern agricultural lime... However, the researchers of the original studies are standing by their work... Both Bronze Age women are well known by archaeologists; the remains of Egtved Girl (the possible priestess) and Skrydstrup Woman were found in Denmark in 1921 and 1935, respectively. More recently, the Freis and their colleagues found that...

A team working at the Shimao archaeological site in Shaanxi province made the discovery during a recent excavation of the city’s Neolithic ruins, which are thought to date back to about 2,000BC, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday. “The beast-face patterns found in Shimao might have had a significant influence on the motifs of China’s Bronze Age,” Sun Zhouyong, president of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, said in the report. Researchers unearthed about 30 carvings at the site with designs similar to those found on the elaborately decorated bronze vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasties (1600-256BC). While most...

Barrow Clump has a remarkably long history of human activity. The Bronze Age burial mound built on an even older Neolithic settlement, was reused as an Anglo-Saxon cemetery. It had already been damaged by ploughing, but permission to excavate a listed site was granted because of damage by more recent trouble makers -- badgers which were burrowing out the entire site, and kicking out human bones as they dug. This year's excavation was just beside the burial mound -- "the badgers are happily back in residence in the barrow now" Osgood said -- carried out in scorching heat and clay...