In Jerusalem, archaeologists have found a 2,700-year-old seal while sifting through soil taken from the remains of a First Temple period building located near the Western Wall of the Temple Mount.  Bearing the name “Matanyahu,” the seal, which was carved from a semi-precious stone, would have been set in a signet ring and used for signing letters and for identification.

Due to almost daily incidents of graffiti, officials from Pakistan’s Archaeology Department have decided to restrict the access of visitors to Lahore Fort. There are 20 guards on duty at a time and closed-circuit television cameras, but the fort receives some 6,000 visitors a day, and up to 100,000 on holidays. Laws are in place that make writing, scribbling, or engraving on a historical building an offense punishable with jail time and fines, but they have not been enforced by the police, and children are not taught the significance of the buildings in school. “When we catch someone scribbling or scratching, we give him a wet cloth to undo the damage… Unfortunately, permanent ink permeates into white marble and cannot be erased easily. And scratching cannot be undone,” said Afzal Khan, deputy director of the Archaeology Department.

The Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command has identified the remains of Army Captain Charles Barnes, whose plane disappeared in Vietnam in 1969. The crash site where Barnes and four others died was excavated in 2000, after a local citizen turned in an identification tag bearing Barnes’ name. DNA was recovered and matched to his sister. Barnes will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Elephant bones unearthed at the site of Preresa in Spain show that people ate elephant meat and bone marrow 80,000 years ago. “There are many sites, but few with fossil remains with marks that demonstrate humans’ purpose,” said Jose Yravedra of Complutense University of Madrid. The researchers are not sure if the humans killed the elephant during a hunt, or if they scavenged its remains.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, May 1, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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