Archaeologists have raised what they are calling the first uniform, co-ordinated weapons system from a late sixteenth-century English shipwreck off the coast of Alderney. “We cannot wait to get a closer look at it once it has been cleaned up. Archaeologically and historically, this is an important day,” said Menus Bound of Oxford University.

A Scottish gold coin dated 1601 was unearthed at the Colony of Avalon in Newfoundland, which was founded in 1621 by George Calvert, who later become Lord Baltimore.  

Australian National University PhD candidate Debbie Argue has suggested that Homo floresiensis descended from Australopithecus garhi, which lived in Africa some 2.2 million years ago. “The hobbit has some very ancient australopithecine characteristics, which suggest its ancestors were tiny. . . . If we’re right, it means some hominin must have moved out of Africa about two million years ago,” she said.   

Wildfire threatens Comanche National Grassland in Colorado, home to 1,000-year-old rock art and rock huts built by early homesteaders.  

A date palm tree sprouted from a 2,000-year-old seed found at Masada is now three years old and four feet tall.  

Fifty sets of human remains have landed on Vancouver Island with their Tseycum Nation descendants. The bones had been collected and sold in the early twentieth century by archaeologist Harlan Ingersoll Smith.  

Meanwhile, there are new excavations of American Indian bones and artifacts in northern California near the Oroville Dam. The digging is required by law in order to assess the dam’s impact on the surrounding area, but some Konkow Maidu people want it to stop.   

Digging has stopped at the mass graves of fallen World War I soldiers in Fromelles, France. “We now have artifacts that show we have uncovered the remains of both British and Australian soldiers,” announced Australian Defense Minister Warren Snowdon.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, June 13, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.