Lawyers for the government of Spain submitted evidence to a Florida court that the ship codenamed The Black Swan by the salvage company Odyssey Marine Exploration, is indeed Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a Spanish navy frigate, which sank during the Battle of Cape Saint Mary in 1804.

Construction workers stumbled upon 27 Etruscan tombs 50 miles north of Rome. “I hope that we have found tombs that are still intact,” said archaeologist Maria Tecla Castaldi. 

Aboriginal leaders from Australia’s Fraser Island are calling for a halt to the construction of a six-foot-tall dingo fence around tourist areas. They say the work has damaged sacred sites and burial areas.  

 The Druze people, who live in mountainous regions of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, and Jordan, have been shown to carry ancient lineages of mitochondrial DNA, providing “a sample snapshot of the genetic landscape of the Near East prior to the modern age,” according to Karl Skorecki and his team from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.  

 In Hungary, underwater archaeologists will begin to search the Danube River for ships belonging to Queen Mary. The sixteenth-century monarch fled to Vienna during an Ottoman invasion, but legend states that a few of her treasure-laden ships didn’t finish the trip.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, May 8, 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.