News Round Up

NITRA, SLOVAKIA—The Slovak Spectator reports that a Nestorian Christian community dating to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D. is being mapped and investigated on Failaka Island, which is located in the Persian Gulf. Karol Pieta of the…

MAINZ, GERMANY—DW.com reports that a team of researchers used a pulley to lift the 1,500-pound lid from a sarcophagus in the central nave of St. Johannis Church, one of the oldest Christian churches in western Germany. The tomb is thought to belong…

SVISHTOV, BULGARIA—Archaeology in Bulgaria reports that an excavation conducted by Nikolay Ovcharov of Bulgaria’s National Institute and Museum of Archaeology unearthed a collection of small cannonballs at the well-preserved site of Zishtova…

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA—New Scientist reports that Li Liu of Stanford University and an international team of researchers found evidence of fermented starch granules on pottery sherds uncovered at two early farming sites located about 185 miles apart…

MADRID, SPAIN—It had been previously thought that the practice of herding domesticated animals may have spread across Africa through exchange networks, but Science News reports that a new genetic study of human remains unearthed in East Africa tells…

SOFIA, BULGARIA—The Sofia Globe reports that a brick burial chamber held together with pale yellow mortar and covered with a stone slab was discovered just under the modern street level near Sofia’s Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. The tomb measures…

TEMPE, ARIZONA—According to a report in The Independent, researchers led by David Braun of George Washington University and Christopher Campisano of Arizona State University uncovered a collection of 327 Oldowan tools dated to more than 2.58 million…

ABERDEENSHIRE, SCOTLAND—The Herald Scotland reports that pottery made in the carinated bowl tradition has been unearthed at Kirkton of Fetteresso, a site located near eastern Scotland’s Stonehaven Bay, and dated to between 3952 and 3766 B.C. The…

PERTH, AUSTRALIA—Live Science reports that a new study of the “Kula footprints,” which were discovered in a layer of volcanic ash in western Turkey’s Kula Volcanic Geopark in the 1960s, employed two separate dating methods—radiogenic helium dating…

Manga is a Japanese visual form of storytelling that employs the power of line to draw the reader into the story. Although manga’s roots are international, the form as we know it today developed in Japan in the late 19th and 20th centuries and has…

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—Cosmos Magazine reports that evidence of intestinal parasite infection has been detected in 8,000-year-old feces from Turkey’s well-preserved Neolithic village of Çatalhöyük. Archaeologist Piers Mitchell of Cambridge University…

TALSARN, WALES—BBC News reports that a Stone Age ax and nine other flint tools were unearthed in western Wales by a team of archaeology students from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. The ax is still sharp, according to archaeologist…

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND—Science News reports that archaeologist Cynthia Larbey of the University of Cambridge and her colleagues have found evidence that modern humans roasted tubers and roots for food as early as 120,000 years ago. The starch granules…

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,…

One of the star objects in Reimagining Captain Cook: Pacific perspectives is this ‘chief mourner’s costume’ from Tahiti, in the Society Islands. The costume (known as a heva) was worn during the mourning ceremonies following the death of a chief in…

Throughout the month of May, the ADS has been investigating and debunking some of the myths and misconceptions that surround archives, digital preservation and the Archaeology Data Service. You may have seen us using the Twitter hashtag #…

EMAS was founded in 1988 as the University of London Extra-Mural Archaeological Society and was initially open to anyone who was a past, or present, student of the University of London Extra-Mural Certificate and Diploma Classes. The post The EMAS…

SOFIA, BULGARIA—Archaeology in Bulgaria reports that the 7,600-year-old skeleton of a woman has been discovered in the fetal position next to the remains of a house in the Slatina Neolithic Settlement, on the banks of the Slatinska River in western…

WARSAW, POLAND—According to a Science in Poland report, a team of archaeologists led by Jolanta Młynarczyk and Mariusz Burdajewicz of the University of Warsaw has begun to investigate the ancient temple complex known as Khirbat es-Sar, in…

MARSEILLE, FRANCE—A new computer model has been used to test a variety of factors that may have influenced the extinction of the Neanderthals, according to a Live Science report. “For a long time, it was thought that Homo sapiens had simply killed…