Egyptologist Mark Lehner returned to his hometown in North Dakota for his high school reunion, and he gave a talk on the Giza Plateau Mapping Project. “I spent two years by hand putting a grid on the Sphinx and mapping every stone,” he told his audience. Lehner is also a member of ARCHAEOLOGY’s editorial advisory board.

In Scotland, archaeologists have located traces of Maiden Castle near Maiden Stone, erected by the Picts in the eighth century. There’s also an outline of a 2,000-year-old fort at the site, where a thirteenth-century castle still stands in ruin.   

Human remains that had been kept in the closet of a private home in Colorado will be repatriated. “Our best efforts will be made to connect the remains to contemporary tribes,” said Susan Collins of the Colorado Historical Society.  

The New York Times has picked up on the competition between energy development in western states and the preservation of archaeological sites. “We’re caught in the middle between traditional culture and archaeological research and the valid existing rights of the oil and gas leaseholders,” said archaeologist LouAnn Jacobson, who manages both the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument and the Anasazi Heritage Center.  

The British newspaper Telegraph has published an article on the new survey of the “graveyard of the Atlantic,” the wrecks of some 90 ships sunk during World War II off the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia. The ships sit in shallow water, and are a popular spot for divers. “The vast majority of divers just go to see, but it doesn’t take more than a handful to do a lot of damage,” said David Alberg, who is leading the project for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  

A few more details on the woman’s skeleton found in a lead coffin in northern Greece are available from Live Science. Traces of resins, oils, and spices and partially preserved tissues were recently discovered on the bones, which were unearthed in 1962.   

There’s a short video on Iran’s “salt men” at National Geographic News. Some think that the men may have been trapped in the salt mine by an earthquake.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, August 4, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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