A 12,000-year-old site has been unearthed in Keene, New Hampshire. “Not very much at all is known about these people. What is very special about this site is that this is one of the very early sites. These were some of the first people to come into this area at the end of the Ice Age,” said archaeologist Robert Goodby.

Restoration of the Veetrirundha Perumal temple, built in 850 A.D., has begun in southern India. The temple has murals from three dynasties, spanning some 700 years.

A team of Mexican archaeologists will return to Egypt, where they are conserving the 3,500-year-old Theban Tomb 39. “The place is exceptionally beautiful due to the amount of hieroglyphs found on the walls, which can be deciphered, as well as the good conservation state of the murals,” said Angelina Macias Goytia of the National Institute of Anthropology and History. The tomb will soon be open to the public.  

A rare photograph of two enslaved African-American boys has been found at the home of a man thought to be a descendant of one of the boys. “It is a very difficult and poignant piece of American history,” said Will Stapp of the Smithsonian Institution. The collector who found the picture wants to resell it to a museum.  

The young woman whose remains are known as the Santa Rosa mummy may have died from complications of Cantrell’s syndrome, which causes defects in the diaphragm, abdominal wall, pericardium, heart, and lower sternum. The 700-year-old mummy was examined as part of restoration work.  

In Canada’s Yukon Territory, a Gold Rush-era steamboat named the A.J. Goddard has been designated a historic site, thus protecting it from salvagers. The steamboat sank in 1901, while carrying miners and supplies across Lake Laberge.  

Two more photographs of the seventeenth-century ship’s hull discovered off the North Carolina coast are available. “These are amazing vessels. The technology involved is incredible. You can see the wood is amazing. Also, we don’t have anything like it today,” enthused Bradley Rodgers of East Carolina University.  

The skeletal remains of a man believed to have been Edward Salter, a retired member of Blackbeard’s pirate crew, will be examined by scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, and then reburied in North Carolina.  

Excavations at Fairbanks House, the oldest wood-frame house in North America, have yielded many more artifacts than archaeologists expected. The Dedham, Massachusetts, home was inhabited by members of the Fairbanks family from 1636 until 1904.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, June 11, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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