Archaeology News Online

There has been damage to monuments and archaeological sites on Kos as a result of the strong earthquake that shook the island in the early hours of Friday morning, a team of archaeological service experts sent by the culture ministry reported. The inspection revealed damage to sites around the town, the castle and the Ottoman mosques, the team said, announcing that preliminary protection measures will be taken and the monuments restored after due study. "For this purpose, a Central Service team from the Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Monuments Restoration directorate will go to Kos on Saturday and Monday in order to assess the situation and finalise the actions [that will be taken]," a culture ministry announcement said. The tremor also caused the movement and damage of exhibits, especially pottery, at the island's archaeological museum and this will be temporarily closed until the damage is restored, the ministry said, along with the Casa Romana monument on the island. For...

Spanish archaeologists excavating a Visigoth necropolis in Sena, in the northeastern province of Huesca, have uncovered what they say is a burial site dating to the 10th century BCE and that was part of the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture. An urn that revealed the existence of the cemetery dating back more than 2,000 years [Credit: EFE] Two urns and a lid were discovered in the graveyard. Hugo Chautón, the archaeologist overseeing the excavation, says Urnfield culture spread from central Europe into northeastern Spain around 1,000 years BCE. The name comes from the Urnfield culture’s custom of cremating the dead and placing their ashes in urns, which were then buried. “This culture represents the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron,” said Chautón, “and provides valuable information about burial practices, particularly the move from burying the dead to cremating them.” Archaeologists work on the Visigoth burial site in Sena (Huesca) [Credit: EFE] The team has been excavating a V...

They came by boat, bringing cooking utensils, crockery and all the other necessities needed for life in a strange land. That is how Julia Budka imagines the arrival, around 1539 BC, of the first Egyptian administrators in the new town on the island of Sai in the Nile. They were far from home, for the settlement lay in Nubia, between the river’s 2nd and 3rd cataracts. Following the final conquest of the whole of the African kingdom of Kerma by the Pharaoh Thutmose III, Egyptian expansion to the south continued, and the island’s location made it an ideal jump-off point. River traffic could be effectively controlled from here, and Egypt’s armies could be supplied with everything they needed to consolidate their hold. For Nubia was the primary source of gold and other valuable resources from Sub-Saharan Africa for the Egyptian state. Aerial view of the ruins of the town of Sai. Founded by the Egyptians on the island of the same name in the Nile,  in what is now Sudan, the town was occu...

The Association of Greek Archaeologists has been informed about unsettling developments regarding the intended conversion of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul to an Islamic mosque and in an announcement it made, expresses its strong concern in view of such a prospect. The Association of Greek Archaeologists requests the Greek government and international organizations to stay vigilant  and intervene so that this supremely important monument remains the property of all humankind,  an inseparable part of global cultural heritage [Credit: Shutterstock] As the AGA mentions in its announcement : “Hagia Sophia that was inaugurated in 537, has been operating as a museum since 1934 and due to its significance, constitutes a World Heritage site included, since 1985, in the relevant list of UNESCO. ”The repeated reading of the Koran and of prayers for a second consecutive year within this emblematic monument acts as a harbinger, with the ulterior motive being the cancellation of its function as ...

In saliva, scientists have found hints that a "ghost" species of archaic humans may have contributed genetic material to ancestors of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa today. In saliva, scientists have found hints that a "ghost" species of archaic human may have contributed genetic material to  ancestors of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa today. The finding comes from a University at Buffalo-led research project  that examined the evolutionary history of MUC7, a gene that codes for an important salivary protein of the same name  [Credit: Bob Wilder/University at Buffalo] The research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that sexual rendezvous between different archaic human species may not have been unusual. Past studies have concluded that the forebears of modern humans in Asia and Europe interbred with other early hominin species, including Neanderthals and Denisovans. The new research is among more recent genetic analyses indicating that ancient Af...

What was life in the fens like in the period known as the dark ages? Archaeologist Susan Oosthuizen revisits the history of an iconic wetland in the light of fresh evidence and paints a compelling portrait of communities in tune with their changeable environment. In doing so, she makes an important contribution to a wider understanding of early medieval landscapes. Highland Cattle grazing in the Wicken Fen [Credit: © Wicken Fen] The East Anglian fens with their flat expanses and wide skies, a tract of some of the UK's richest farmland, are invariably described as bleak – or worse. Turn the clock back 1,000 years to a time when the silt and peat wetlands were largely undrained, and it's easy to imagine a place that defied rather than welcomed human occupation. Historians have long argued that during the 'dark' ages (the period between the withdrawal of Roman administration in around 400 AD and the Norman Conquest in 1066) most settlements in the region were deserted, and...