Cambodian and Thai troops exchanged heavy gunfire today near the eleventh-century Preah Vihear temple, located near their shared border. At least two soldiers were killed. Conflict in the area began last year when the temple was given UNESCO World Heritage status.

Egyptian customs officials stopped an illegal shipment of artifacts to Spain that had been hidden in furniture and other wood products.  

Dynamite-wielding looters damaged 11 niches in rock walls in Mersin, Turkey. The reliefs carved into the niches dated to the third century B.C.

Sophisticated digital imaging is being used by a team of scientists to study the delicate painting of a statue of an Amazon Warrior discovered in 2006 in Herculaneum.   

Construction work in Salzburg, Austria, uncovered wooden buildings, jewelry, tools, and pottery, all thought to have been part of a village dating between the fifth and seventh centuries A.D.   

Kilns unearthed in northern China may have been used to bake bricks for reinforcement of the Great Wall during the Ming Dynasty, 600 years ago.  

Albania created a national park to protect the UNESCO World Heritage site of Butrint, which has become the model of preservation for the country, despite its turbulent recent history.  

A 4,000-year-old flint ax turned up at the Olympic construction site in London.  

In the Philippines, archaeologists unearthed a 400-year-old gold necklace from the grave a woman found in a church compound.  Here’s more information on the excavations in the church graveyard.   The necklace belongs to the national government and not the church, but special arrangements could be made to display it at the Cebu Cathedral Museum.   

Learn more about the rock art at Arizona’s V-Bar-V Heritage Site. “Trying to sort out imagery is probably the toughest thing in archaeology,” said Travis Bone, an archaeologist for the Red Rock District of the Coconino National Forest.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, April 3, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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