In 2001, 362 cuneiform tablets that had been smuggled into New Jersey were stopped by U.S. Customs officials and put in storage at the very bottom of one of the twin towers at the World Trade Center. When the buildings were destroyed on September 11, the tablets were crumbled and soaked with water. Earlier this month, the reassembled tablets were returned to Iraq.

Thirty-seven Iron Age tombs have been discovered in Greece, near the ancient Macedonian capital of Pellas. The artifacts from the few of the tombs that have been excavated include iron swords, spears, and daggers; pottery; jewelry made of gold, silver, and iron; and a bronze helmet trimmed in gold and a gold mouth plate.  

Eight fragments of limestone inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphics were spotted in an antiques shop in Spain by a scholar from the University of Barcelona. The artifacts had been looted from Saqqara in 1999 and will be returned to the Egyptian government.  

A stone slab carved in the thirteenth century has been taken from a remote village in the state of Goa, India. The carvings tell the story of a local hero’s death in battle.  

Ray Norris, an astronomer for Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization, thinks that Australia’s Aborigines may have been the world’s first astronomers. “We’ve established there is all this astronomy, what I don’t know is how far back this goes,” he said.  

One of the oldest skeletons in the Americas has been recovered from an undersea cave along Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. The caves filled with water as the ice caps melted at least 10,000 years ago. Researchers think that after the bones have been carefully dried out, they may shed light on the populating of the Americas.  

Discovery News has more information on the tomb of Karakhamun, which was recently rediscovered in Luxor.  

In Maui, archaeology students are assisting with the excavation of Moku’ula, the ancient political and spiritual center of the Hawaiian Islands. Plantation managers filled in the sacred site in 1914.  

And, there’s more information on the royal box at King Herod’s private theater in Israel.  

A rare iron-working furnace has been unearthed in the north of Scotland. “At the moment we don’t even know whether it’s prehistoric or medieval,” said archaeologist Matt Ritchie.  

Some 100 rock art sites have been found in Somaliland, including a 4,000-year-old image of a man on horseback, and 5,000-year-old depictions of horned cattle, sheep, and goats. “With wars, droughts and piracy in Somalia, hardly anyone has researched the archaeology until now. But it’s absolutely full of extraordinarily well-preserved rock art,” said Sada Mire of University College London and a UN consultant for Somaliland.  

The trial of Raphael Golb has begun in New York. Golb is accused of setting up an alleged email smear campaign against Dead Sea Scrolls scholar Lawrence Schiffman of New York University, whose opinion on the origins of the scrolls differs from Golb’s father, Norman Golb of Chicago University.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, September 17, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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