Two 7,000-year-old log boats and one 6,000-year-old boat have deteriorated while sitting in a collapsed shed in Germany for the past seven years. Students at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin will try to conserve fragments of the ancient vessels.

How do networks of artifact traffickers work? “This is one of the world’s biggest illegal enterprises,” explained Terressa Davis of the University of Georgia in Athens.   

Police in Jarkarta recovered the Vairocana Buddha statue, which was stolen from Balaputradewa Museum last week.  

Sri Lankan authorities will seek the return of artifacts housed in foreign museums. “During the colonial period, archaeological treasures belonging to various religious institutions were taken away. There is a UNESCO understanding that these items should be returned to their countries of origin,” said Dinesh Gunawardene, Minister of Urban Development and Sacred Area Development.  

Tourists will soon be offered increased access to the three pyramids at Dahshur. “This is going to be an adventure,” Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, told reporters.  

This blog by Nature tackles the claim made by a BBC documentary that Cleopatra may have been at least part African, rather than Greek.  

Residues of perfume were detected in a 3,500-year-old Egyptian flacon in Bonn University’s Egyptian Museum. The flacon bears the name of Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh, and pharmacologists hope to recreate her favorite scent.  

What did the artisans and workmen of Deir Al-Medina do when their labors were no longer required in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings?  Rob Demaree of Leiden University says that they built tombs for the priests of Amun, and reused royal coffins and object that had been buried with the Ramasside kings.   

James Spirek of the South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology is scanning Charleston Harbor for Confederate frame torpedoes. The torpedoes were mines anchored to the bottom with wooden frames to guard against Union ships.

Historic markers will be placed near Florida’s Loxahatchee River, at the site where a small group of Seminoles and their free black allies fought more than 1,500 U.S. troops in 1838, during the Second Seminole War.  

Some 60 American Indian sites along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon are in danger of washing away. National Park Service archaeologists began excavations in 2006, and they have uncovered a kiva, homes, granaries, gaming pieces, pottery, and a bison bone.  

An ancient weir, or v-shaped fish trap, has been spotted in an aerial photograph off the coast of Wales. The 1,000-year-old rock-walled pool would have kept fish from escaping during low tide.  

A fifteenth-century inscription in the margins of a history book notes that Robin Hood “infested Sherwood and other law-abiding areas of England with continuous robberies.” The book, which dates from the late 1340s, is the library of England’s Eton College.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, March 16, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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