Egypt’s antiquities authority has announced that archaeologists pieced together a wooden embalming bed from fragments found in a room in KV-63. “We believe this was a room used for embalming because we found some embalming materials, including herbs, oils, and pottery vessels,” said Luxor antiquities director Mansour Bouriq.

This article in Al-Ahram Weekly tells the story of the Egyptian wall paintings taken from the tomb of Nebamun in the early nineteenth century, and describes the new gallery where they are now displayed in the British Museum.  

A team of scientists is analyzing the teeth of crew members from Columbus’ second voyage to the New World. “This is telling us about where people came from and what they ate as children,” said anthropologist T. Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The men’s remains were found at the site of La Isabela on the island of Hispaniola in 1990.  

A felony charge against a California man accused of removing artifacts from an American Indian site in a public park has been dropped. “The law requires that it be taken from a grave. There hasn’t been any testimony that says it [an arrowhead] was taken from a grave,” ruled Judge Joyce Hinrichs. The 30-year-old man still faces two misdemeanor charges.  

A treasure hunter in Wales uncovered two bronze bowls and a bronze wine strainer.  

Archaeologists are digging underwater in Turkey at the 6,000-year-old city of Limantepe. An earthquake ca. 700 B.C. caused a section of the city to slide into the Aegean Sea.   

Popular Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s octagonal-shaped retirement retreat, will celebrate its 200^th anniversary when it reopens next month, after extensive renovations. “He was blending all the things he liked – British, French, and American. This is a very small slice of architectural history because it’s so playful. It wouldn’t be so playful if it were a public house like Monticello,” said Travis McDonald, director of the architectural restoration.  

It has been 50 years since the Nubian monuments at Aswan were salvaged before the creation of Lake Nasser. “Hundreds of sites were inventoried and thousands of objects were identified and conserved,” by 70 separate archaeological missions from 25 countries, explained Giuseppe Fanfoni, director of the Italo-Egyptian Center for Restoration and Archaeology.  

Australia’s Lake Mungo area was occupied continuously by Aborigines for 50,000 years, and is recognized as a world-class archaeological site. The dry lake bed is now a “flat, barren bed of a long-dried lake and weathered, albeit unusual, sand dunes,” writes traveler Bruce Elder.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, March 20, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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