Archaeologists are looking for the lost medieval abbey at Scotland’s Scone Palace, and they are also investigating nearby Moot Hill, where Scottish kings were crowned.

In Iceland, an engraved gold ring was uncovered in a grave at a monastery, although it isn’t clear if the burial is associated with the church.   

The Ukranian town of Baturyn was burned down by the Russian Army in 1708 after Ivan Mazepa, a resident, fought against the tsar with the Swedish Army. Now, the Ukranian government wants finish a reconstruction of Baturyn in time to mark the anniversary of its destruction.  

An Ohio man who removed an 8-ton boulder from the Kentucky side of the Ohio River will be arraigned in Kentucky, under the charge of removing an object of antiquity. The boulder, which is listed on Kentucky’s official antiquities register, is carved with an image of a face that may be prehistoric, and early twentieth-century names.  

Margaret Gowen, chairwoman of the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland, responds to accusations made in an editorial last week that Ireland’s contract archaeologists need to recover their core principles and ethics.  

Excavation has begun at a Neolithic site discovered in southern China 50 years ago. The settlement is being called the world’s largest. “I was shocked when I first saw the site. I have never seen such a big and orderly one,” said Yan Wenming of Peking University.  

Peek inside an underground chamber near the Great Pyramid with this video from National Geographic News, and see the timbers of a 4,500-year-old ship apparently intended to carry Khufu into the afterlife. The video states that the timbers will be left in the chamber to preserve them, but reports yesterday stated that the ship would be excavated and reassembled.  

Primate brains increased in size in isolated groups, according to a new study that measured the skulls, jaws, teeth, and body sizes of living New World monkeys, in order to create a model to estimate the tiny brain and body sizes of fossil primates. “[New World and Old World primates] today have large brains, so that transformation has to have occurred subsequent to the evolutionary split,” said evolutionary biologist John Finarelli of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, July 22, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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