Two men arrested in Pakistan for carrying hundreds of looted Buddhist artifacts in a truck told police where to find additional artifacts stored in a warehouse in Karachi. All of the Gandhara objects have been handed over to archaeologists to be unpacked and recorded. “We are handling [the relics] with care since pieces were broken during offloading,” said Mohammad Shah Bokhari, director of the National Museum.

Archaeologist Ashley White has found the Indian village of Potano, where Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto made contact in Marion County, Florida, in 1539. White discovered medieval coins, Italian glass beads, bits of Spanish chain mail, pottery, nails, and a jaw bone from an Old World pig. The only other known De Soto site in Florida is in Tallahassee, where he wintered with his troops in 1540. “It gets rid of the guesswork now on the route through Marion County. Now, we know for sure he came up through the Black Sink Prairie to Orange Lake and looped around through Micanopy,” he explained. Other archaeologists assisted White with authenticating the De Soto artifacts. “Like other Spanish explorers, the De Soto expedition brought trade goods, things they could give the Indians to get them to be their friends, to pay them off, to provide bearers to carry supplies, to get food and to get consorts. When De Soto arrived, the Indians would have been cleaning hides, making pottery, carrying on with their lives. All that would change when De Soto shows up,” said Jerald Milanich, curator emeritus in archaeology of the Florida Museum of Natural History.

DNA analysis has shown that a skeleton uncovered beneath the foundations of a 3,000-year-old roundhouse on an island in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides was buried with a lower jaw, arm bone, and thighbone from different people. A second skeleton has been found in the village in a similar condition.  In addition, the researchers think that the bodies had been tied up in tight in mummy bundles many years after being preserved in nearby peat bogs. “Altogether, these results have completely changed our ideas about treatment of the dead in prehistoric Britain. Other archaeologists are now identifying similar examples now that the breakthrough has been made – beforehand, it was just unthinkable,” said Mike Parker-Pearson of the University of Sheffield.

Researchers from the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery will soon land at the island of Nikumaroro, where they will continue to search for evidence of aviator Amelia Earhart, who disappeared 75 years ago while attempting to fly around the world at the equator. They hope to find remains of her plane, based upon a photograph taken of the island’s shoreline a few months after her disappearance. Discovery News has photographs and diagrams to explain the operation.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, July 9, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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