A tomb made out of more than 2,000 blue and white stacked porcelain bowls stuck together with rice and cement was discovered just beneath a road in Chongqing, China. Similar tombs have been found in Fujian Province, prompting archaeologists to speculate that the tomb had been built by migrant workers. 

Four 1,600-year-old bronze mirrors were stolen from a museum in northwest China.  

The government of Peru and Yale University are inching toward a court battle over artifacts from Machu Picchu excavated by Hiram Bingham III in the early twentieth century. The artifacts have been held by Yale, but now Peru wants them back. Peru’s chief negotiator, Hernan Garrido-Lecca, was unable to attend a meeting scheduled for last month because he was needed at a medical industry strike.  

A first-century Roman fort has been discovered in England’s Lake District, near the prehistoric site of Castlerigg Stone Circle. “An aerial photograph … revealed a crop mark which I thought might have been the lost manor of Castlerigg. That’s what the volunteers were looking for, or a possible second stone circle. What they’ve found is amazing,” said landowner Mark Cockbain.  

Portions of fortification walls that surrounded Jerusalem in the Second Temple period and during the Byzantine period have been uncovered. The walls were discovered in the nineteenth century by archaeologists who left behind their own beer bottles and a shoe.  

A soil sample taken from the submerged forest in Scotland’s Loch Tay contained charcoal, bone, and cereal grain. “Potentially, we could be finding evidence of human impact on the environment from several thousand years ago,” said Barrie Andrian of the Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology.  

James Madison would once again recognize his Virginia plantation, Montpelier. The completion of a five-year restoration project at the Georgian mansion will be celebrated later this month.  

The upper part of a marble funerary stele and a bronze krater that were returned to Greece by American collector Shelby White have been put on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. The piece of funerary stele will then be reunited with the lower fragment at the Museum of Vravrona.  

Here’s another article on the discovery of a cemetery and male fertility symbols at Kfar Hahoresh, in northern Israel. The cemetery holds the remains of many young men, and there were “intensive ritual practices in the area,” according to Nigel Goring-Morris of Hebrew University. A photograph of some of the artifacts is included.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, September 3, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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