The New Acropolis Museum will open in Athens tomorrow. “The ceremony will be plain and elegant, not spectacular. We’re leaving spectacular to the museum and its exhibits,” said archaeologist Dimitris Pandermalis.   Here’s a brief description of the new museum.

Human researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have learned that tool use among wild chimpanzees is more complex than originally thought, especially among honey-eating chimps in Loango National Park on the coast of Gabon. “It is past time to give up on the idea that there is going to be some simple, qualitative statement that fully encapsulates what is unique about human tool use,” commented archaeologist Dietrich Stout of University College London.  

Stone tools have been unearthed in what is now Delaware. Most of the artifacts are at least 1,000 years old, and some are more than 4,000 years old.  

A camp used by the Jornada Mogollon more than 650 years ago has been uncovered at a military base in New Mexico. “We found structures that represent two fairly distinct occupations, maybe a couple of hundred years apart,” said contract archaeologist Mark Sales.  

Ancient human remains discovered by hikers in Washington State will be turned over to local tribes for reburial.   

Students from the University of Virginia have been digging at the Morven Farm, using a map of an ancient Indian camp drawn by Thomas Jefferson as a guide. “We’re going to record all the history that’s out here and there’s probably thousands of years of history,” said their professor, Jeffrey Hantman.  

The seventeenth-century footings of a Welsh town’s historic bridge were revealed by a construction crew. The bridge had been designed by noted British architect Inigo Jones.  

Tomorrow may be the big day for the opening of the New Acropolis Museum, but it is also the day that the banjo-ukulele used to write the “Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener” jingle will be donated to the Wisconsin Historical Museum. The song will be played on the instrument one last time as part of the ceremony.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, June 19, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.