News Round Up

OSLO, NORWAY—The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) announced that a ship burial and a settlement have been spotted with high-resolution georadar in northwestern Norway by a team of researchers led by Knut Paasche of NIKU’s…

In this book, the history of Yorkshire from prehistory to present day is told through the lens of the conflicts that occurred in each period. Beginning with prehistoric occupation and following the story of the region up to the 20th century, the…

VARJA, ESTONIA—Estonian Public Broadcasting reports that a box-shaped brooch dated to the late eighth or ninth century A.D. was recovered in northeastern Estonia, near a Viking-era trade route and possible farmstead site. Archaeologist Mauri Kiudsoo…

SAQQARA, EGYPT—Live Science reports that two mummified lions have been discovered among about 100 statues of cats and other figures, some 20 cat mummies, and a scarab measuring more than one foot in diameter in a 2,600-year-old tomb in the Saqqara…

MUSCAT, OMAN—The Times of Oman reports that a burial site consisting of 45 tombs has been found near an Iron Age settlement on eastern Oman's Al Saleel Mountain by a team of researchers from Oman’s Ministry of Heritage and Culture and the University…

FORT MCCOY, WISCONSIN—Researchers from the Directorate of Public Works Environmental Division Natural Resources Branch found four pieces of a harmonica among some 2,000 artifacts dating from the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries at…

VICTORIA, CANADA—John Peter Oleson of the University of Victoria suggests that a 1,300-year-old piece of carved sandstone recovered at Humayma, an early Islamic trade outpost in southern Jordan, may be a chess piece, Science News reports. Oleson…

This slim book offers an interesting introduction to Roman gardens, the mythology and history behind them, and the details of their design. Author Anthony Beeson (an expert in Roman iconography – see p.18 of this issue) states that gardens were…

BORDEAUX, FRANCE—Human remains have been discovered in the basement of a Christian convent in southwestern France that now houses the Aquitaine Museum, according to an AFP-JIJI report. The remains are thought to belong to the sixteenth-century…

CANAKKALE, TURKEY—The Anadolu Agency reports that a monument thought to be 8,000 years old has been discovered in northwestern Turkey’s Ugurlu-Zeytinlik mound by a team of researchers led by Burcin Erdogu of Trakya University. The T-shaped monument…

NOVOSIBIRSK, RUSSIA—The Siberian Times reports that a fragment of a cave lion figurine estimated to be 45,000 years old was unearthed in Siberia’s Denisova Cave by researchers led by Mikhail Shunkov of the Novosibirsk Institute of Archaeology and…

The story of the Trojan War is one of the foundational myths of Western culture. Two of the world’s oldest poems, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, take it as their inspiration. The Iliad is set in the 10th year of the war, the Odyssey in the aftermath as…

The Foundling Museum is presenting the first major exhibition to explore representations of the pregnant female body through portraits from the past 500 years, opening in January 2020 Until the twentieth century, many women spent most of their adult…

The House of Illustration is showing the pioneering and powerful infographics of black sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist WEB Du Bois The use of infographics to market and explain everything from tourist offers to complex…

Archaeologists working on the conservation of Hay Castle have made another important discovery to add to a growing collection of intriguing treasures Archaeologists working on the conservation of one of the great medieval defence structures on the…

The rather modest avowed aim of this book is to ‘present a series of snapshots of drinking establishments through the ages’, and author David Johnson has succeeded in this. As the title indicates, his book covers premises that have either been…

JMW Turner’s exquisite oil sketches of  the Thames are heading home for a spell at Turner’s House in Twickenham The Thames was an inspiration that flowed through JMW Turner’s life, from his birth near the river in Covent Garden to the houses he…

The Ness of Brodgar has been congratulated in the Scottish Parliament for its success in the 2019 Shanghai Archaeology Forum Field Discovery Awards. Many thanks to Orkney MSP Liam McArthur for tabling the motion. This is the second time the joint……

LAMBAYEQUE, PERU—Live Science reports that archaeologist Edgar Bracamonte of the Royal Tombs of Sipan Museum and his colleagues have discovered a 3,000-year-old temple at the site of Huaca El Toro in northwestern Peru’s Zaña Valley. The temple,…

TRONDHEIM, NORWAY—The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) announced the discovery of a single grave in central Norway containing the poorly preserved remains of two people who had been interred on separate occasions. The original…