News Round Up

CAIRO, EGYPT—Reuters reports that an industrial area has been found in an area of Luxor’s West Valley, known as the Valley of the Monkeys, by an Egyptian team led by archaeologist Zahi Hawass. The site comprised 30 workshops and storage structures,…

UPPSALA, SWEDEN—Researchers led by Helena Malmström of Uppsala University have discovered a genetic link between continental Europe's Corded Ware culture and the Scandinavian herders of the Battle Axe culture, which first appears in the…

PHNOM PENH, CAMBODIA—Archaeologists excavating near an entrance to the twelfth-century stone temple of Tai Nei in Angkor, Cambodia, have unearthed the head of a Buddhist sculpture, reports the Phnom Penh Post. The team was searching for remains of…

Professor Joanna Brück has produced a fresh textbook of the Bronze Age that builds a complex picture of the period from the personal up to the broader landscape in Britain and Ireland. Joanna explores the period through the intricacies of the…

Who were Achilles’ parents? Achilles was the son of Peleus, a Greek king, and Thetis, a sea nymph or goddess. Zeus, the king of the gods and Poseidon, god of the sea, had both fallen in love with Thetis and were rivals for her hand in marriage.…

A project to uncover a Roman mosaic from the 4th century AD near Boxford, Berkshire, has been successfully completed, revealing one of the most impressive mosaics found in the UK. It was originally discovered towards the end of a three-year project…

NARA PREFECTURE, JAPAN—The Mainichi reports that a fragment of an earthenware vessel inscribed with a possible drawing of a woman shaman wearing a bird costume was uncovered in western Japan at Shimizukaze, a site dating to the middle of the Yayoi…

HARDANGER, NORWAY—Life in Norway reports that hiker Ernst Hagen discovered an iron arrowhead measuring about five inches long on a mountain some 4,600 feet above sea level in western Norway. Archaeologist Tore Slinning of Hordaland County Council…

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND—BBC News reports that 1,000 possible archaeological sites have been identified on Arran, an island off the coast of Scotland, with lidar technology, a type of laser scanning that can create a 3-D record of the land surface from the…

In 2003, an excavation by MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) discovered a spectacular Anglo-Saxon burial chamber at Prittlewell, near Southend-on-Sea. Since then, expert analysis of the burial and its contents has indeed yielded a vast array of new…

Britain’s largest Second World War prisoner-of-war camp, located in the Yorkshire countryside close to Sheffield, was recently brought to light by a team of students and archaeologists from the University of Sheffield. Known as Lodge Moor, the camp…

NAPLES, ITALY—A fresco that graphically depicts the impending combat victory of one gladiator over another has been uncovered in Pompeii's Regio V, according to a report in The Independent. The victor, identified as a murmillo-type gladiator by his…

HELSINKI, FINLAND—National Parks Traveler reports that the National Museum of Finland will hand over the remains of 20 individuals and 28 artifacts removed from what is now Mesa Verde National Park in the late nineteenth century to representatives…

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations reports that a Cambodian sandstone sculpture dating to the tenth century A.D. has been recovered from an auction house. The headless statue,…

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS—According to a Science Magazine report, analysis of the bones of 104 Early Bronze Age farmers who were buried in family cemeteries in southern Germany some 4,000 years ago has revealed a network of family groups related through…

DENBIGHSHIRE, WALES—BBC News reports that a Neolithic quarry has been discovered in northern Wales at St. Dyfnog’s Well, a Christian pilgrimage site connected to a sixth-century Welsh saint, who is said to have stood under a cold waterfall in a…

The University of the Highlands and Islands is seeking outstanding applicants for doctoral AHRC funded studentships in Archaeology. A select number of studentships will be available for PhD applicants living the UK and the European Union. Successful…

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—The New York Times reports that hominins living in what is now Israel may have stored food as early as 400,000 years ago. Researchers led by Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University analyzed marks on more than 80,000 bones from Qesem Cave…

NICOSIA, CYPRUS—In-Cyprus reports that a previously unknown fortification dating to the early Hellenistic period has been discovered at the site of Pyla-Vigla on the southeastern coast of Cyprus. The well-defended settlement is situated on a steep…

PLOVDIV, BULGARIA—The Sofia Globe reports that a marble slab bearing an inscription dating to the second century A.D. has been unearthed at the forum of the ancient city of Philippopolis in southern Bulgaria. The city’s library, treasury, and Odeon…