Casts of the Hobbit’s fossilized bones were on display for the first time anywhere at Stony Brook University in New York this past Tuesday. “I really had no idea how small it was until now,” said Stony Brook student Jennifer Kamb. After the one-day exhibition, the Homo floresiensis casts were packed up and shipped home to Indonesia.    There’s more information on the Hobbit and a picture of “Flo’s” skull at Time.

Economist Steven D. Levitt, author of Freakonomics, discusses an ARCHAEOLOGY article about EBay and the illegal antiquities trade in his blog for the New York Times.   Click here to read the full text of “Forging Ahead,” by Charles Stanish.  

In Germany, excavation of a mass grave of Jews killed by the Nazis in 1945 has begun.  

Australia’s Commonwealth War Graves Commission has appointed an archaeology company to complete the excavation of Australian and British war dead buried in mass graves at Fromelles, France. Lambis Englezos, an Australian school teacher who pinpointed the location of the burial and notified the authorities, will be given a short tour during the excavation. Archaeologists want to limit possible contamination of the site, in order to increase the chances of identifying the soldiers’ remains with DNA testing.  

ABC News has picked up the story on archaeologist Jane Lynden Rousseau’s study of the crypts beneath Boston’s Old North Church. “This basement is bursting with bones,” she said.  

Read more about the computer reconstruction of a Neanderthal pelvis and ideas about childbirth in Science.  

Don’t miss the traditional Maya feast prepared by archaeologists Patricio Balona and Ben Thomas and executive chef Jason Munger at the Archaeological Institute of America Gala!

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, April 23, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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