Archaeological News

[whitetd49]

http://www.yale.edu/opa/newsr/05-09-27-01.all.html

The famous missing Mayan city known as Site Q has been identified as La Corona in nothern Guatemala!

[Pep]

http://www.radio.cz/en/article/70835

Czech archaeologists excavate Ancient Greek town flattened by Bohemian Celts
[20-09-2005] By Pavla Horakova

For twelve years, Czech archaeologists have been helping their Bulgarian colleagues in the excavations of an Ancient Greek market town in central Bulgaria. The twelve years of work has yielded valuable results, including a hoard of coins, and discovered a surprising connection between the ancient town and the Czech Lands.

The river port of Pistiros was founded in the 5th century BC by a local Thracian ruler. From the excavations we know that wine from Greece was imported to the town in large amphoras. Other pottery was found in and around the remnants of houses and also a hoard of treasure was unearthed from one of the ruins. Professor Jan Bouzek was head of the team.

"Well, it was a hoard of some 561 coins. They were buried just before the Celtic invasion which came there in 278 BC. They were put into a locally made jar, just in a hurry, because the Celts were apparently already attacking the city."

Over a thousand coins were unearthed on the site, minted in various Greek cities and bearing the portraits of many rulers, including Philip II, who caused considerable damage to Pistiros around the year 345 BC. The city was destroyed by Celtic invaders some fifty years later and never fully recovered. Interestingly, some of the attackers apparently came from what is now the Czech Republic.

"In the destruction we found several Celtic weapons which were partly burnt and most of them are not well preserved with the exception of one arrowhead. But we found in the ruins that at the time of the looting of the city they lost one of the typical fibulae (buckles) of the so-called Duchcov type which were especially well-known from a great hoard in Duchcov and which must have been made in this country. Some of the Celts from these parts apparently participated because they were also one of the four tribes which founded the kingdom of Galatia. They were Celts living in the northern part of this country."

The fruits of the 12-year Czech-Bulgarian joint research were first presented to the archaeological community last week in Prague at the Third International Congress on Black Sea Antiquities. As Professor Jan Bouzek says the beginnings of Czech-Bulgarian cooperation in archaeology date back to the 19th century.

"Well, the history is much longer. Both my professors who did archaeology epigraphy were working in Bulgaria. And 80 percent of the founders of Bulgarian archaeology were the Czechs. They were the Skorpil family, Professor Vaclav Dobrusky - who was actually the first person who had any knowledge of our site. Vaclav Dobrusky was the founder of the Bulgarian National Archaeological Museum and he discovered the first inscription on the [Pistiros] site. It was long forgotten and only discovered much later by my friend Mieczyslaw Domaradski who was Polish-born but lived and worked in Bulgaria. He really discovered the city much later."


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[Numerianus]

Recent articles: world famous  museums encouraged "black"  archeologists:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,385007,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/273618.stm
http://te.verweg.com/pipermail/cpprot/2005-November/002044.html
http://www.transnationalcrimesblog.com/2005/11/trafficking-in-antiquitiesboston.html
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0511/S00226.htm

[baseball_7]

I've read about that as well. Here in Boston, the museum of fine arts is taking it pretty seriously. The Boston Golbe first broke the story a week or two ago, and the Museum contacted Italian officials the next day to see what they could do (they have several pieces that may have been stolen).

[GMoneti]

Here is something interesting regarding law and trade relations between Thracians and Greeks in Pistiros:

http://www.apaclassics.org/AnnualMeeting/05mtg/abstracts/Demetriou.html

Regarding the Czech article, it seems very unlikely that in this region wine was imported from Greece, as the area around Pistiros was (and still is) ideal for vineyards and wine was a very important product for the Thracians(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistiros).  Dionysus, the god of wine, was a Thracian deity, adopted by the Greeks and the Romans. 

Georgi

[LordBest]

http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2005-12-05_2038237.html

Very nifty.
                                                    LordBest.

[Robert_Brenchley]

<<After the fall of the Roman Empire, the art of brick manufacturing was lost in most of Europe, surviving only in Italy itself. Central Europe didn't rediscover the skill until the 18th century and England until the 1100s .>>

I've a feeling that the art reached Britain in the late 1400's. There's a very early brick castle at Kirby Muxloe near Leicester which was abandoned half-built when its owner had his head amputated by Richard III, but I haven't come across anything earlier. But I could be wrong.

[christopher62883]

Archaeologists Find Tomb Under Roman Forum

ROME - Archaeologists digging beneath the Roman Forum have discovered a 3,000-year-old tomb that pre-dates the birth of ancient Rome by several hundred years.

State TV Thursday night showed an excavation team removing vases from the tomb, which resembled a deep well.

Archaeologists were excavating under the level of the ancient forum, a popular tourist site, when they dug up the tomb, which they suspect is part of an entire necropolis, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

"I am convinced that the excavations will bring more tombs to light," ANSA quoted Rome's archaeology commissioner, Eugenio La Rocca, as saying.

Also found inside the tomb was a funerary urn, ANSA said.

State TV quoted experts as saying the tomb appeared to date to about 1,000 B.C., meaning the people who constructed the necropolis pre-dated the ancient Romans by hundreds of years.

Legend has it that Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the god of war, Mars.

Last year, archaeologists who have been digging for some two decades in the forum said they believed they found evidence of a royal palace roughly dating to the period of the legendary founding.

[LordBest]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/turkey/story/0,,1694257,00.html

The great ports and docks of Constantinople found. Not a very good article to be honest, but its a find of immense importance. Not only that, they have found the first ever Byzantine military naval vessal ever recovered, with its Greek fire mechanisms intact, according to some preliminary reports. That and five other ships, some of which may also be military vessals. If its all the archaeologists working on it say its one of the most important finds in Late Roman/Byzantine archaeology in the last century.
                                             LordBest.

[Pscipio]

with its Greek fire mechanisms intact, according to some preliminary reports.

That would be a sensation, indeed!

Lars

[GMoneti]

The remains of an ancient Greek cargo ship that sank more than 2,300 years ago have been uncovered with a deep-sea robot, archaeologists announced today.

The ship was carrying hundreds of ceramic jars of wine and olive oil and went down off Chios and the Oinoussai islands in the eastern Aegean Sea sometime around 350 B.C.

 Archeologists speculate that a fire or rough weather may have sunk the ship. The wreckage was found submerged beneath 200 feet (60 meters) of water.

 The researchers hope that the shipwreck will provide clues about the trade network that existed between the ancient Greek and their trading partners.

...

http://www.livescience.com/history/060202_greek_shipwreck.html

Georgi

[Numerianus]

The Met, Ending 30-Year Stance, Is Set to Yield Prized Vase to Italy .

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/03/arts/03muse.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[Congius]

The Met, Ending 30-Year Stance, Is Set to Yield Prized Vase to Italy .

Interesting... the article says the Met bought the vase from Robert Hecht, so no doubt it's what's going on at the Getty Museum that made them suddenly more willing to negotiate than face the alternative!

Ben

[Plancus]

A Roman-era tomb and burial ground found in Crete:

http://www.courant.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-greece-archaeology,0,4607613.story

[Ecgþeow]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11252094/


First new tomb discovered in the Valley of the Kings since the 1922 Tutankhamun discovery.

EDIT: sorry, werong link, I fixed it

[AlexB]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4707014.stm

Hellenistic tomb found in Pella!

[GMoneti]

Headless sphinx found in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli.

http://www.livescience.com/history/060208_ap_headless_sphinx.html

[Retrospectator]

Headless sphinx found in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli.

"Officials said that the newly uncovered area of the site, northeast of Rome, would be open to the public within a year."

This is happy news, particularly as there has been some negative news from the  Rome area recently regarding the potential perils that some of its well known archaeological monuments are facing. I'm not sure though that the continual uncovering of new discoveries is a good thing under these circumstances however, as it may put more strain on the existing resources as new discoveries need to be preserved too!

 I look forward to visiting Hadrian's villa though.  

[Jochen]

<<After the fall of the Roman Empire, the art of brick manufacturing was lost in most of Europe, surviving only in Italy itself. Central Europe didn't rediscover the skill until the 18th century and England until the 1100s .>>

I've a feeling that the art reached Britain in the late 1400's. There's a very early brick castle at Kirby Muxloe near Leicester which was abandoned half-built when its owner had his head amputated by Richard III, but I haven't come across anything earlier. But I could be wrong.

Sorry, I have read this post but now. The art of brick making was known in Norther Germany, Polen, Scandinavia and the Baltic provinces from the beginning of the 12th century. A stile was created called 'Backsteingotik' something like 'Brick Gothic' which dominates the cities of the Hansa from Lübeck to Riga.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backsteingotik

Best regards

[LordBest]

http://www.sis.gov.eg/En/EgyptOnline/Culture/000001/0203000000000000000593.htm
Mummy oh Pharoahette Hatshepsut found, after 3500 years missing, a few decades stuffed in a room somewhere, and then found. Strangely enough the very morning before I read this I had thought to myself in an archaeology lectur "I do hope they find Hatshepsut in my lifetime".
                                                              LordBest.

[Congius]

Considering the amount of stuff that's been found in their basement, 3rd floor, or wherever, it seems Egyptologists would have more success in excavating the Cairo museum than the valley of the kings!

Ben

[areich]

Will Cuppy on Egyptologists:

"Egyptologists say they have no idea what Khufu was doing when he was not building pyramids, since he left no inscriptions describing his daily activities, and they would give a good deal to know. Then they say he had six wives and a harem full of concubines. They do not seem to make the connection, but you get it and I get it. We do not need any hieroglyphics to inform us that Khufu dropped around occasionally to see how things were getting along and to tell the ladies how many cubic yards of limestone he had laid that afternoon."

[GMoneti]

Experts Find Evidence of Bosnia Pyramid

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060419/ap_on_sc/bosnia_pyramid

VISOKO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Researchers in Bosnia on Wednesday unearthed the first solid evidence that an ancient pyramid lies hidden beneath a massive hill — a series of geometrically cut stone slabs that could form part of the structure's sloping surface.

This says that the supposed pyramid is 220 meters (722 feet) high, or a third taller than Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza. It also says that there are other hills shaped like pyramids visible from satelite images.  Btw, "Visoko" means "high". 

There is also a site for the project: www.bosnianpyramids.org

[rjohara]

I know it's before the time of coins, but it's interesting nevertheless....

This week's issue of Science (28 April 2006) carries two papers and a news story on the dating of early Aegean civilizations through radiocarbon. There has been a controversy (the story says) centering on the date of the eruption of Thera (modern Santorini) which may have been responsible for the destruction of Minoan civilization. (I think the tsunami angle is most likely myself -- imagine what an event like the recent Indonesian tsunami would have done to a bronze-age culture living on the shoreline.)

The controversy has been between those who would put the eruption of Thera in the 1600s BC, and those who would place it a century later in the 1500s. New radiocarbon dating puts the reuption within the 1627-1600 BC range. The Egyptologists, who favor the later dating, are not amused. They had tended to see the Minoan zenith as correlated with the New Kingdom zenith in the 1500s. The new dates suggest that the Minoan zenith may have been coincident with the less creative Hyksos culture in Egypt, thought to have been derived from Anatolia (where there was also some Minoan influence).

[whitetd49]

This one is going to ripple through archeology.  It also roughly corresponds to the decline of Mycaenae.