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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...