News Round Up

KURESSAARE, ESTONIA—ERR News reports that two hoards of silver coins dating to the Viking era have been discovered on the island of Saaremaa. The first hoard dates to the latter half of the tenth century A.D., and is thought to have been carried to…

HARISH, ISRAEL—As many as 6,000 people may have once lived in En Esur, a 5,000-year-old site uncovered in northern Israel, according to a CNN report. Built on top of an earlier settlement, the city was situated at the crossroads of two trade routes…

‘Orientalism’ refers to the representation of the East in Western art which often blurred the line between fantasy and reality. The Orientalist art movement reached its height during the 19th century and is perhaps best known today for its…

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND—BBC News reports that archaeology student Emma Marsh of Durham University is examining the rubble of Liverpool buildings destroyed during seven days of Nazi bombing raids in May 1941, and identifying where it came from with…

ATHENS, GREECE—According to a Science in Poland report, archaeologist Bartłomiej Lis of the British School at Athens was able to track the movement of potters away from the island of Aegina some 3,200 years ago by analyzing pottery uncovered on the…

CASMA, PERU—According to an Andina report, the intact 1,000-year-old skeletal remains of a dog were discovered inside the main building at Sechin, a 4,000-year-old site in northern coastal Peru’s Casma Valley. Sechín Archaeological Project Director…

SISI, CRETE—According to the Greek Reporter, an international team of archaeologists under the direction of Greece’s Lasithi Antiquities Ephorate have conducted excavations at a Minoan-era settlement in eastern Crete. This season, the team members…

During the first half of the first millennium A.D., the metropolis of Teotihuacan flourished in what is now central Mexico. Amid the bustling city’s formal avenues and standardized apartment blocks, stone faces measuring between six and nine inches…

NAPLES, ITALY—According to a Science Magazine report, short-wave infrared hyperspectral imaging has allowed a team of researchers led by classicist Graziano Ranocchia of the National Research Council in Rome to decipher text written on the reverse…

NARA PREFECTURE, JAPAN—The Mainichi reports that a team of researchers from the Archaeological Institute of Kashihara have uncovered what may have been a noble’s large home on the island of Honshu about one mile away from Fujiwarakyo, the capital of…

JENA, GERMANY—An international team of researchers led by Mark Hudson of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History suggests that fish may have been raised for food in China as early as 6200 B.C. The scientists analyzed and compared…

Contemporary art is on view at Stonehenge’s visitor centre for the first time. Lucia Marchini went along to take a look and find out more about an artistic approach to archaeology. The post Review – Conversations in making appeared first on Current…

I’ve just been to a one-day conference at the LAARC, the Museum of London’s Archaeological Archive and Research Centre in Hackney, on the banks of the Grand Union Canal, just north of Old Street. I must confess I haven’t been to the LAARC since its…

CAIRO, EGYPT—Ahram Online reports that a copper ornament stolen from the fifteenth-century Al-Kady Abdel-Baset mosque in 2014 has been recovered and returned to the mosque’s main door. Police tracked the artifact through the use of surveillance…

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA—An international team of more than 60 researchers led by archaeologist Rebecca Foote has begun a two-year project to survey some 11,500 Nabataean sites in an area covering more than 1,000 square miles in northwestern Saudi…

JENA, GERMANY—According to a Cosmos Magazine report, new radiocarbon dates obtained by Oshan Wedage of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and his colleagues indicate that the thousands of small quartz tools recovered from Sri…

VARNA, BULGARIA—The Sofia Globe reports that a well-preserved cache of 16 gold coins and more than 20 bronze coins was uncovered over a two-day period in the town of Devnya, which is located about 15 miles away from Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast.…

Since the 1980s, archaeologist Jan Simek and his colleagues have surveyed prehistoric artwork decorating the deepest reaches of caves, including the so-called “Unnamed Caves,” of Tennessee and Alabama. Many of the artworks were incised on the mud…

HAIFA, ISRAEL—Richard Cooke of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Irit Zohar of the University of Haifa examined fish preparation methods practiced today by traditional fishing communities in central Pacific Panama and Egypt's southern…

JENA, GERMANY—Science Magazine reports that researchers led by Maria Spyrou of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History analyzed the genomes of 34 samples of Y. pestis, the bacteria that caused the Black Death, obtained from the…