Donny George, former director of Iraq’s National Museum, has died. Dr. George was forced to flee his country after the start of the Iraq War. He had been a visiting professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University in New York.

Beneath a Christian basilica, archaeologists have found traces of a small fourth-century A.D. building that may be the oldest Christian worship space in Thessaloniki, Greece. 

A report from Sri Lanka indicates that an Australian archaeologist discovered a piece of silk dating to the second century A.D. in the Kotavehera Stupa. 

A North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to one felony violation of the Archaeological Resources Protection Act for defacing the “Descending Sheep” rock art site in the Grand Canyon. He will pay $10,000 in restitution. 

Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes the plague, was discovered in the tooth pulp of fourteenth-century skeletons across Europe. Some had argued that the Black Death, which killed 60 percent of the population, was caused by an unidentified “fever.” 

Terry Myers of the College of William and Mary thinks he has located the small building that was once housed the Bray School, opened to educate enslaved and free African Americans in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1760. The building had been moved and renovated in the nineteenth century, so more research is necessary. 

Here’s a new attempt to explain King Henry VIII’s health woes and infertility problems. 

CNN offers more information about mystery novelist Agatha Christie’s connection to archaeology.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, March 14, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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