Paris was occupied in 7600 B.C., or 3,000 years earlier than previously believed, according to new excavations on the southwestern edge of the city. Archaeologists say the site was used to process flint pebbles that washed up on the banks of the Seine River.

Bulgarian archaeologist Georgi Kitov spoke about his work at Drumeva, a Thracian tumulus surrounded by a stone wall, which was named for the mayor of the nearby town of Staro Selo. Six intact graves dating to the Roman period have been found.  

A medieval maltings, where barley was heat soaked for beer-making, was discovered on the grounds of a modern brewery in Bury, England. “I imagine beer has changed for the better, though the process is largely the same. Their beers would have been quite malty, heavier,” said head brewer John Bexon.  

A 5,000-year-old skull, stone cairns, flint tools, pottery, and traces of a Neolithic house were uncovered at Isle of Man Airport.   

A stone entrance has been discovered to the Black Spout enclosure in Scotland. Its heavily built walls once surrounded a timber building. “The feature of these walls is really a status symbol to show the importance of these buildings in that they would have been very visible in the landscape,” said archaeologist David Strachan.  

Field school students from the University of Southern Mississippi are working at Moran, an early French settlement in Biloxi. “It was a Jamestown,” said their professor, Marie Danforth.   

Two pins made of deer bone and a fossilized bone pendant were stolen from the Weedon Island Preserve Cultural and Natural History Center in St. Petersburg, Florida. The artifacts are more than 1,000 years old.   

A seventeenth-century courthouse is being excavated in Charles County, Maryland.  

Here’s part two in the tale of London’s mayor, Boris Johnson, and former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz’s cigar case. Johnson picked up the case from Aziz’s villa in 2003. “As it happens, I also have in my possession a letter from the lawyers of Tariq Aziz, informing me that Mr. Aziz wishes me to regard the cigar case as a gift,” Johnson told reporters.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, June 26, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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