News Round Up

YORK, ENGLAND—BBC News reports that calcified plaque scraped from 6,000-year-old teeth has provided early evidence for dairy consumption among Britain’s Neolithic farmers. Traces of dairy products analyzed in the study were obtained from pottery…

NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT—The Middletown Press reports that the skeletons of four people discovered in the same grave shaft during construction work in 2011 at the site of Yale New Haven Hospital have been identified as the remains of nineteenth-…

SOZOPOL, BULGARIA—The Sofia Globe reports that a bronze ram’s head statuette has been recovered from a pit on St. Cyricus Island in the Black Sea, off the coast of the ancient city of Apollonia. Founded in the seventh century B.C. by Greeks from the…

LE ROZEL, FRANCE—According to a New Scientist report, analysis of 257 fossilized footprints by a team of researchers led by Jérémy Duveau of France’s National Museum of Natural History suggests Neanderthals may have been taller than previously…

WARSAW, POLAND—Science in Poland reports that researchers led by Małgorzata Kot of the University of Warsaw found rock art in Uzbekistan’s Chatkal Mountains while investigating 40,000-year-old prehistoric camp sites in the region. “We received a…

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS—According to a Live Science report, a new study of the chemical composition of the 2,000-year-old Temple Scroll revealed traces of a salty mineral solution that could account for its remarkable state of preservation. The…

ZHENGZHOU, CHINA—Two gilded silver dragon figurines featuring detailed horns, eyes, teeth, and feathers have been discovered in a Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 9) tomb in north-central Mongolia, according to a Xinhua report. The tomb is said to…

LETY U PISKU, CZECH REPUBLIC—Romea.cz reports that the skeleton of a woman whose teeth had been knocked out has been found in a shallow grave at a memorial dedicated to Holocaust victims, near the site of a World War II–era concentration camp for…

Dr Angharad Jones, Collections Officer at Creswell Crags, on the importance of Hyenas to the story of the famous Ice Age caves that line the limestone gorge on the border of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Hyenas are incredibly important to the story…

The Shakespeare Birthplace marks the 250th anniversary of David Garrick’s Shakespeare Jubilee in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1769 and the birth of Stratford-upon-Avon as the place for all things Shakespeare Although renowned today across the world as the…

A small but beautifully formed collection of Islamic metalwork from the Courtauld Art Gallery is about to tour the UK With its shape and strangely familiar design, the Courtauld Bag might seem like a contemporary creation, but it was made in Mosul,…

A 4,000-year-old jet necklace comprising over 100 ornate beads has been discovered during the excavation of a Bronze Age burial mound on the Isle of Man. For the past three seasons, archaeologists have been excavating at Berk Farm, near Kirk Michael…

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS—According to a Live Science report, Vagheesh Narasimhan of Harvard Medical School and his colleagues were able to obtain a viable DNA sample from the remains of one of 61 individuals buried some 5,000 years ago in a cemetery…

HEFEI, CHINA—Xinhua reports that traces of an industrial-scale distillery that operated during the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368–1644) and the Qing Dynasty (A.D. 1644–1911) have been unearthed in eastern China. Chen Chao of the Anhui Provincial Institute…

PARIS, FRANCE—Nature News reports that palaeogeneticist Eva-Maria Geigl of the Institute Jacques Monod and her colleagues have digitally reconstructed the tip of the little finger of a Denisovan individual’s right hand. The finger bone was…

MOSCOW, RUSSIA—DNA analysis has revealed that two women and a young man whose remains were recovered from a medieval mass grave in northwestern Russia were a 55-year-old grandmother, her 30-to-40-year-old daughter, and her grandson, who was about 20…

Located in Orkney, the Ness of Brodgar is one of the largest and most important Neolithic excavations in Europe. As the eight week dig season comes to an end, the international team working at the site uncovered an incredible underground… Continue…

The community archaeology excavation at the Burn of Swartigill is now nearing completion for this season. The dig itself is organised by the Yarrows Heritage Trust in collaboration with the University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology…

This summer marks 80 years since the Sutton Hoo ship burial was discovered, revolutionising our understanding of the Anglo-Saxon period. The site has just reopened to the public following a £4 million investment. Carly Hilts paid a visit to see how…

In CA 339 (June 2018), I explored the site of Sutton Hoo through past issues of Current Archaeology. Here, I gleefully pay a return visit to this site, a place that is one of the spiritual homes of British archaeology. It is somewhere that has…