News Round Up

NUNAVUT, CANADA—Radio Canada International reports that ideal weather conditions have allowed Parks Canada researchers to dive to and explore the wreckage of the HMS Terror, which sank in the high Arctic during an expedition launched in 1845 by Sir…

SANTIAGO, CHILE—According to a Live Science report, Francisco Garrido and Catalina Morales of Chile’s National Museum of Natural History suggest the conquerors of the expanding Inca Empire may have displayed human heads at the remote village of…

ATHENS, GREECE—New research by Alessandro Pierattini of the University of Notre Dame indicates that a “primitive lifting machine” was employed by Greek builders as early as the mid-seventh century B.C., according to a Gizmodo report. Previous…

A spectacular coin hoard offers an insight into life in England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066 A vast coin hoard recording the dramatic transition from Anglo Saxon to Norman Kingship in the wake of the Battle of Hastings in 1066 is the latest…

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA—The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that traces of Philadelphia’s eighteenth-century waterfront were spotted in three test trenches placed to the north of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge ahead of a construction project.…

MIDLOTHIAN, SCOTLAND—The Edinburgh Evening News reports that amateur historian and metal detectorist Jarosław Musialkowski discovered a cache of 200 silver coins at a possible medieval military camp in Scotland’s east-central Lowlands. The site is…

AUVERGNE, FRANCE—According to a report in The Connexion, 30 toppled monoliths and a human skeleton were discovered in central France during an archaeological investigation ahead of road construction. The stones, called menhirs, measure between three…

The British Museum Membercast is a monthly podcast made available to ‘all studious and curious persons’. Comedian, podcaster and super-fan Iszi Lawrence (The Z List Dead List) presents snippets from exclusive Members’ lectures at the Museum,…

WINDHAM, MAINE—Researchers from the Maine Historic Preservation Commission have uncovered remains of Province Fort, a wooden structure built at the highest point of the colonial-era frontier English settlement of New Marblehead, according to a…

VANCOUVER, CANADA—CBC News reports that Bob Muckle of Capilano University and his colleagues found traces of three Japanese settlements dating to the first half of the twentieth century near British Columbia’s North Shore Mountains, in a protected…

DURANGO, COLORADO—The Journal reports that human remains and traces of early Native American villages dating to A.D. 800 have been discovered ahead of highway construction on top of southwestern Colorado’s Florida Mesa. Enhanced radar technology…

The University of the Highlands and Islands Archaeology Institute, in partnership with the Yarrows Heritage Trust and ORCA Archaeology, have completed their first week of excavation at the community dig, near the Burn of Swartigill. Rick Barton,…

PAPHOS, CYPRUS—According to a report in the Cyprus Mail, a team led by Andrew McCarthy of the University of Edinburgh uncovered a well-preserved hearth and floor surface covered in mud plaster at a house dating to 2500 to 2300 B.C. in the Dhiarizos…

ZAGREB, CROATIA—According to a Live Science report, bioarchaeologist Mario Novak of the Institute for Anthropological Research in Zagreb suggests that artificially shaped heads may have been used by cultural groups in the years after the fall of the…

DINGWALL, SCOTLAND—The Ross-shire Journal reports that a stone carved with Pictish figures was discovered at the site of an early Christian church in northeastern Scotland, during a survey by Anne MacInnes of the North of Scotland Archaeological…

DINGWALL, SCOTLAND—The Ross-shire Journal reports that a stone carved with Pictish figures was discovered at the site of an early Christian church in northeastern Scotland, during a survey by Anne MacInnes of the North of Scotland Archaeological…

BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND—A new analysis of data collected at Ireland’s early medieval archaeological sites suggests the island’s population had been in decline for about 200 years before the arrival of the Vikings in the tenth century A.D.,…

LA PAZ, BOLIVIA—According to an Associated Press report, Michigan State University Museum handed over the mummy of an Incan girl to the government of Bolivia. Records show that the well-preserved remains came from a chullpa, or stone tomb, located…

ORKNEY, SCOTLAND—BBC News reports that a human arm bone has been discovered under a stone-slab wall at what may have been a temple at the Ness of Brodgar, a Neolithic complex where very few human remains have been recovered. The bone measures…

Priests in Roman Britain are a mysterious bunch. How were they organised? What do their regalia tell us about their roles? What do the contexts in which priestly objects were found reveal about priests’ activities? These are the questions that…