Construction work on a railway in central Athens has revealed what could be the Altar of the Twelve Gods, which marked the center of the ancient city. “Thucydides mentions only a handful of monuments in his historical works. Of these, even fewer have actually been found and they are located in the archaeological sites surrounded by the mass of this densely built city,” explained archaeologist Androniki Makri.

Here’s another article on the former government of Tunisia and the condition of Carthage, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The family of former dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali is alleged to have tapped into a network of Iraqi antiquities smugglers in order to sell off Roman and Byzantine coins, mosaics, and sculptures from the ancient city.  

A Hellenistic burial chamber has been unearthed at Apamea, in central Syria. 

Alex Alvarez, Franco Attolini, and Alberto (Beto) Nava of Projecto Espeleologico de Tulum describe their discovery of an Ice Age mastodon and a human skull deep within a flooded cave in Mexico’s Aktun-Hu cave system for NatGeo News Watch. The human remains could be the oldest in the Americas.  

Archaeologist Takeshi Inomata of the University of Arizona writes from Guatemala, where he is digging deep at the Maya site of Ceibal. He and colleague Daniela Triadan want “to explore the origins of lowland Maya civilization.”  

Budget cuts at the Irish Heritage Council have stopped work at a 700-year-old wooden fishing weir in the Fergus Estuary in County Clare. “There are serious logistical and practical difficulties involved in gathering the data and taking samples,” said Aidan O’Sullivan of University College Dublin.

I’ll be on vacation next week, so I’ll return to the News on Monday, February 28. –Jessica

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, February 18, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.