News Round Up

The top secret wartime role of Benjamin Disraeli’s former home is being revealed by the National Trust at Hughenden The National Trust acquired Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s home, Hughenden in Buckinghamshire, in 1947, but the manor’s…

NEW YORK, NEW YORK—Cosmos reports that a 160,000-year-old molar discovered in a cave on the Tibetan Plateau in 1980 may be evidence of a link between Denisovans and the ancestors of modern Asians. The molar features a third root, which is found in…

MOSCOW, RUSSIA—Reuters reports that a team made up of French and Russian researchers has unearthed the possible remains of General Charles-Etienne Gudin, a French aristocrat, in the western Russian city of Smolensk. Gudin, a childhood friend of…

SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA—The Khmer Times reports that the three-foot-long torso section of a sandstone statue was discovered at the site of the ninth-century A.D. Preah Ko temple in northwestern Cambodia by a local resident who contacted heritage…

Hello again to the Cairns followers – it doesn’t seem a year since I was last here on site, and writing once more for the blog! I’m Jo McKenzie, a research geoarchaeologist with the University of Bradford and currently one… Continue reading →

A pivotal Turner painting joins museum collections in the East of England JMW Turner’s painting Walton Bridges (1805) capturing the double-span bridge that ran across the Thames between the locks at Sunbury and Shepperton in Surrey marked a pivotal…

PLOVDIV, BULGARIA—According to an Archaeology in Bulgaria report, a 130-foot-long tunnel large enough for draft animals to pass through has been discovered in a third-century A.D. tomb by a team of researchers led by Kostadin Kisyov of the Plovdiv…

MUGLA, TURKEY—The Anadolu Agency reports that the 3,000-year-old ceremonial pathway between the temple of Hecate in Lagina and the town of Stratonikeia has been uncovered near the coast of western Turkey. “It is the most important sacred road that…

TAIPEI, TAIWAN—Japan Today reports that a team of researchers traveled in a 25-foot-long dugout canoe approximately 125 miles from southeastern Taiwan to Okinawa over a two-day period using the stars, sun, and wind to navigate. The strong current…

Site Director Martin Carruthers takes up the story of the successful Open Day at the excavation…. Well today was the open day on site and the decision we made to slightly postpone the open day really paid-off as we basked… Continue reading →

KYOTO, JAPAN—The Asahi Shimbun reports that the metal decorations for a mikoshi, or portable shrine, were recovered at Japan’s Kitano Tenmangu shrine, which dates to the tenth century. Tomoyasu Kubo of the Kyoto National Museum said the engravings…

TÜBINGEN, GERMANY—Paleoanthropologist Katerina Harvati of the University of Tübingen and her colleagues determined that damage to a 33,000-year-old skull was inflicted with a bat-like object by a possibly left-handed attacker who struck two…

GREENVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA—According to a report in The Charlotte Observer, a small piece of pressed glass etched with the words “Wilkes and Liberty 45” has been discovered among the artifacts recovered from the site of an eighteenth-century tavern…

The weather conditions at The Cairns this week have been appalling, so Site Director Martin Carruthers has combined Day 14 & 15 into one blog post…. Well what can we say- this blog incorporates two days of work on site… Continue reading →

PALERMO, ITALY—ANSA reports that a votive deposit containing red deer antlers and two large bull horns was discovered at the Selinunte acropolis by a team of researchers led by Clemente Marconi of New York University. The acropolis at Selinunte, an…

SOUTH YORKSHIRE, ENGLAND—The Guardian reports that archaeologists from the University of Sheffield have uncovered traces of Lodge Moor, a prison camp that held more than 11,000 captives from Germany, Italy, and Ukraine at its peak in 1944. A Red…

JENA, GERMANY—Live Science reports that an international team of researchers analyzed DNA extracted from the remains of 10 individuals buried at Ashkelon, a Philistine archaeological site located in Israel, and found evidence of an influx of…

UPPSALA, SWEDEN—Newsweek reports that two ship burials have been discovered on a construction site near Sweden’s eastern coast. Archaeologist Anton Seiler of Sweden’s State Historical Museums said one of the graves was intact, and contained the…

The Climate Risk Assessment for Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Property Report, was published this week and launched at the UNESCO World Heritage Committee meeting held on Tuesday 2 July 2019 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The report was co-authored…

This latest column continues the thread that I began last month, exploring Current Archaeology’s coverage of sites in the care of the National Trust. Last time I looked at stories from issues 1-100 (1967-1986), and this month I delve into issues 101…