News Round Up

Nothing lives forever—except maybe yeast, which can go dormant and hibernate, perhaps indefinitely. An archaeologist, a biologist, and a baking enthusiast have recently embarked on a collaborative project to revive and reuse millennia-old yeast.…

A thriving Bronze Age settlement at the site of Zincirli in southeastern Turkey was suddenly and catastrophically destroyed more than 3,500 years ago, archaeologists have discovered. A joint team from the Universities of Chicago and Tubingen…

Humans and animals have traversed the icy landscape of Norway’s Jotunheimen Mountains for thousands of years. Now, melting ice patches at a site in northern Oppland County are exposing evidence of these often-treacherous crossings. A team of…

Long before pressed pennies and postcards, a resident of Londinium (Roman London) received a witty souvenir from the empire’s capital. An iron stylus—a writing implement used to press letters into wax or clay tablets—dating to about A.D. 70,…

Roadwork at Veyre-Monton in central France has revealed the first known megalithic site in the region. There, archaeologists from France’s National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) have uncovered evidence of cult activity…

Artificial islets called crannogs, which dot the cold loch waters of Scotland and Ireland, were once thought to have been used as defensive fortifications from the Iron Age through the seventeenth century. But both the constructions’ purpose and…

Given that lead is a by-product of silver mining and smelting, historical levels of lead pollution can serve as a proxy for tracking economic growth and decline across the ages. A team of researchers recently studied lead levels dating back to A.D.…

Before the rise of Alexandria in the fourth century B.C., the ancient port city of Thonis-Heracleion at the mouth of the Nile was the gateway to Egypt for foreign traders. The city and a suburb, Canopus, also served as a center of Egyptian religious…

Excavations near an eleventh-century church in Lyminge, Kent, have exposed the foundations of an ancient predecessor. The Anglo-Saxon building dates to the mid-seventh century, just a few decades after Christianity, which had largely disappeared…

IRAN: It turns out that a fossilized tooth found decades ago in the Zagros Mountains did not belong to a modern human as previously thought, but rather to a Neanderthal child who lived between 70,000 and 40,000 years ago. A recent reexamination…

ETHIOPIA: Given the harsh conditions, it’s notoriously difficult for humans to live at extreme altitudes. This did not deter some of our ancient ancestors. Evidence shows that humans were living at least 11,000 feet above sea level in the Bale…

An 8,000-year-old wooden platform has been discovered on the seabed off the Isle of Wight. The platform, which has been excavated by researchers from the Maritime Archaeology Trust (MAT) and taken to a laboratory for study, lay under more than 30…

The University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute Research series of seminars is restarting for the season on Friday 11th October with an exciting monthly programme scheduled for the next semester. This seminar series provides a…

Milton Keynes is celebrating its cult status as the go-to place for skate kids with a trail and exhibition Cliff Richard may have alerted the mainstream world to the roller skating potential of Milton Keynes in the video for his 1981 hit single,…

Museum Crush talks swirling mists, aesthetic ceramics and a unique collection with the De Morgan Foundation The De Morgan Foundation has been on quite a journey; their museum in Wandsworth, which used to house a significant holding of works by the…

St Albans Cathedral is ‘lifting the veil of the past’ to restore the colours of medieval England Most historians agree that the medieval world was a colourful one; churches, statuary and even the clothes of everyone from the peasantry to the clergy…

The fascinating and little known world of William Simmonds, Gloucestershire’s Arts and Crafts puppeteer, artist and sculptor, is explored at the Museum of Gloucester If he is remembered at all, William Simmonds is best known today for his beautiful…

The fascinating and little known world of William Simmonds, Gloucestershire’s Arts and Crafts puppeteer, artist and sculptor, is explored at the Museum of Gloucester If he is remembered at all, William Simmonds is best known today for his beautiful…

A team from ORCA Archaeology discovered sections of wall that were part of the St Magnus Cathedral Close last week while undertaking a watching brief for an Orkney Islands Council infrastructure project in the heart of historic Kirkwall.  A series…

BRORA, SCOTLAND—According to a report in The Scotsman, a team of researchers under the direction of archaeologist Warren Bailie of GUARD Archaeology have returned to the site of the Wilkhouse, an eighteenth-century public house in the Scottish…