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LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists have found the remains of a man who died of tuberculosis more than 2,200 years ago, shattering theories the deadly disease was brought to England by the conquering armies of ancient Rome. The Iron Age skeleton was found in a pit in the tiny village of Tarrant Hinton in southwest England. His damaged spine led scientists to suspect he was a tuberculosis victim and DNA tests confirmed it. Carbon dating shows he lived between 400 and 230 BC, long before Julius Caesar launched Rome's first tentative invasion of Britain in 55 BC. "It's tremendously important,"...

ANCIENT BEVERAGE BREWED IN MILWAUKEE MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN — NPR reports that archaeologist Bettina Arnold of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and her research team worked with Lakefront Brewery to try to re-create an alcoholic beverage that had been placed in a bronze cauldron and buried in a grave sometime between 400 and 450 B.C. in what is now Germany. The recipe was based upon the research of paleobotanist Manfred Rösch, who analyzed the residues in the Iron Age cauldron. He found evidence of honey, meadowsweet, barley, and mint—ingredients in a type of beverage known as a braggot.

Bones, ancient grooming tools, even gold – these are all things you might expect to find if you go poking around an Iron Age burial site. What you might not expect to find is your new favorite tipple. But, back in 2016, archaeologists were stunned to uncover a 2,500-year-old cauldron that contained the remnants of an ancient alcoholic beverage.Project lead Bettina Arnold, from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, was investigating a burial mound – called a tumulus – dating back to between 400 and 450 BCE, when she and her team came across what appeared to be a bronze cauldron. But...

A number of decapitated skeletons have been uncovered by archaeologists at a Roman burial site.The discovery, which included evidence of Roman and Iron Age settlements, was made at Wintringham near St Neots, Cambridgeshire.Dating from 2,500 years ago, the site will feature in the latest series of BBC Two's Digging for Britain...The work comes ahead of a development of about 2,800 homes in the village.Archaeologists uncovered an Iron Age settlement composed of 40 roundhouses and a network of trackways and enclosures related to farming activities.The Oxford Archaeology team also discovered Roman coins, brooches, a large lead lid or platter, and numerous...

In the autumn of 2021, archaeologists of the Museum of Cultural History investigated a grave field by Tyrifjorden in Ringerike. In one of the graves, they discovered a stone with several runic inscriptions. Burnt bones and charcoal from the grave reveal that the runes were inscribed between the years 1 and 250 AD. This makes it the earliest known rune stone...Sometime between 1,800 and 2,000 years ago, someone stood near Tyrifjorden and carved runes into the 31x32 cm block of reddish-brown Ringerike sandstone. They spoke an early form of the ancient Nordic language that is the ancestor language of modern...

Prof. Jennifer Bates and her coworkers, Kelly Wilcox Black and Prof. Kathleen Morrison... explore charred lumps from the site of Kadebakele, in southern India... The site dates from around 2,300 BCE to CE 1600 or so, but these data are from the Early Iron Age, about 800 BC. Charred lumps are usually seen as not identifiable, but using high-quality imaging, they were able to show that (some of) these are charred remains of dough or batter; these would have been used to make bread-like dishes. Comparing the data with experimental studies done another lab group, they identified two kinds of...

Archaeologists have described the discovery of a 2,000-year-old anchor on the seabed off Suffolk as an "incredibly rare" underwater find.The distinctive wrought iron anchor was found 140 feet down in the southern North Sea during survey works for ScottishPower Renewables’ £2.5billion East Anglia ONE offshore windfarm.Experts believe the anchor is a rare example from the Roman or possibly late Iron Age – somewhere between 1,600-2,000 years old – and is evidence of Romans' seafaring and trading off the coast of the East of England.Brandon Mason from Maritime Archaeology Ltd said: “Everything points to this being a Roman anchor of almost...

Exchange of knowledge and expertise, bartering and wooing. Kirkhellaren Cave on Sanna in Træna is one of Norway’s oldest meeting places, having first been used about 10,000 years ago.So far west out at sea that witty people claim that the gulls here speak English, it is midsummer on the Arctic Circle and we are on the island of Sanna in Træna Municipality.A 10 to 15-minute walk from the quay we find Kirkhellaren, a very famous cave where, throughout repeated ice ages, the frost and sea have carved out a cathedral in a crack of the mountainside...The first archaeological excavations in...

Archaeologists recently unearthed ivory plaques found in a luxurious Iron Age residence in Jerusalem, a first-of-its-kind discovery at the site, shedding light on the owner's wealth and social status.The ivory pieces were found in a building from around the eighth or seventh century B.C., the First Temple era, in the City of David...Sifting through the ruins in the building, likely burnt during the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., diggers found around 1,500 ivory fragments, said Reli Avisar from Tel Aviv University, which excavated the site along with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA)...The decorations consisted of frames with rosettes...

Cache of ancient gold rings discovered in Romania. (Ţării Crişurilor Museum, Oradea, Romania) Archaeologists in Romania have discovered an extraordinary cache of ancient gold rings that a 6,500-year-old woman wore in her hair. The trove in a Copper Age grave includes 169 gold rings, 800 bone beads, and an ornate spiraled copper bracelet discovered by a team from the Ţării Crişurilor museum in Oradea, Romania. The jewelry was laid to rest alongside a burial of an "extremely rich" woman, museum director Gabriel Moisa said, Romanian outlet Agerpres reports. Archaeologists identified the remains as belonging to a woman based on the...

Archaeologists From The Glacier Archaeology Program Have Found An Arrow In The Melting Ice During A Research Project In The Norwegian Mountains.The project is focusing on a melted ice patch in the Jotunheimen mountain range, where the team has found a preserved arrow with an intact iron arrowhead, shortly after arriving at their base camp 1750 metres above sea level.The arrow dates from around 1,500 years ago during the Norwegian Iron Age, discovered in a collection of broken rock fragments between larger stones on the lower edge of the icefield.The team believes that the arrow was lost and deposited downslope...

A metal-working site uncovered in Moray may have helped arm Caledonian tribes against the Romans, before being burned down by the invaders.Archaeologists have described the site at Lochinver Quarry, near Elgin, as fascinating and unusual.Evidence has been found of metal production over a period of up to 2,000 years from the Bronze Age through the Iron Age.Archaeologists believe they could end up excavating as many as 40 iron smelting sites.Prior to these discoveries around 25 such sites have been found for the whole of Scotland.Lochinver appears to have been abandoned suddenly and homes and other structures burned down.Archaeologists suggest one...

Excavations were on behalf of HS2 (the purpose-built high speed railway line) near the town of Wendover in Buckinghamshire, England, revealing one of the largest Anglo-Saxon burial sites in Britain that dates from between the 5th and 6th century AD.Most of the burials have been described as containing high-status grave goods, suggesting the site was the final resting place of a wealthy Anglo-Saxon community nearby. The site contains 138 graves, with 141 inhumation burials and 5 cremation burials, in addition to evidence of Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman activity.Many burials were found to contain two brooches in the...

Archaeologists working near the site of an iron age home near Cambridge were perplexed when they uncovered a vast trove of frog skeletons. Quite why more than 8,000 bones had been piled up and preserved is a prehistoric mystery.They were all recovered from a single 14-metre-long ditch, right next to the site of an iron age roundhouse at Bar Hill, where there was a settlement during the middle and late iron age (400BC-AD43)...It is unlikely that these amphibians had been eaten by the people living at the settlement. The archaeologists say that, while there is evidence of amphibian consumption in...

A bungled looting scheme has led archaeologists to an underground Iron Age complex in Turkey that may have been used by a fertility cult during the first millennium B.C., a new study finds.The ancient complex, which has yet to be fully investigated due to the instability of the structure, has rare rock art drawings on its walls featuring a procession of deities depicted in an Assyrian style. This art style appears to have been adapted by local groups, indicating how strongly the culture of the Neo-Assyrian Empire — which hailed from Mesopotamia and later expanded into Anatolia — spread to...

Melting ice sheets in Norway have revealed a bunch of incredibly well-preserved arrows from the distant past. The array of arrows was found around the ice patches of the Jotunheimen Mountains in southern Norway during a 2019 expedition by Secrets of the Ice, a team of glacier archaeologists who scour the receded ice sheets for historical relics. One of the most impressive discoveries includes an Iron Age arrow, approximately 1,500-year-old, that was found lodged in the icy ground before being thawed out using lukewarm water. The team described the condition of this arrow as “awesome,” noting that it still had...

Previously, the Iron Age burial site of Adichanallur in southern Tamil Nadu had revealed an impressive collection of iron implements, currently housed in Chennai’s Egmore Museum, dated between 1000 BCE and 600 BCE.Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, while addressing the Tamil Nadu Assembly Monday, said: “It has been found that the date of the iron artefacts ranges from 2172 BCE to 1615 BCE. The results have reiterated the fact that the Iron Age of Tamil Nadu dates back 4,200 years, which is the oldest in India.”This finding has answered questions relating to the start of agricultural activity in Tamil Nadu, he...

The remains of a Roman malting oven and charred spelt grains were found during digging in Bedfordshire, as part of the proposed work on the A428 between the Black Cat roundabout and Caxton Gibbet.Experts have analysed the grains and said they suggested people who lived there were involved in making beer...During the dig, the team from the Museum of London Archaeology (Mola) and the Cambridge Archaeological Unit discovered the remains of a farmstead that they believed was in use from the Middle Iron Age to the late Roman period.The Iron Age in Britain ran from about 800BC until the period...

Archaeologists have uncovered the exceptionally well-preserved remains of an Iron Age village that grew into a bustling ancient Roman trading town — an archaeological gem with more than 300 Roman coins, glass vessels and water wells — in what is now the district of South Northamptonshire, England in the United Kingdom.The ancient hotspot — known as Blackgrounds for its black soil — has an abundance of ancient artifacts and structures spanning different time periods, including depictions of deities and Roman game pieces, according to about 80 archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) Headland Infrastructure, who spent the past...

Several thousand years ago, an Iron Age salt miner took a dump in what is now the Hallstatt-Dachstein/Salzkammergut area of Austria. In all likelihood, the pooper never gave their little deposit a second thought, and would be rather surprised to learn that it has now become a scientific artifact, enabling researchers to discover that Europeans ate blue cheese and drank beer 2,700 years ago. Reporting the ancient excrement in the journal Current Biology, the study authors reveal that the paleofeces has remained preserved in the region’s prehistoric salt mines over the past few millennia. Using a range of analytical techniques,...