Archaeology Magazine Archive

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Archaeology Magazine News Archive
2008-2012


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Tuesday, July 12
July 12, 2011

Bits of dishes, bricks, and wood from the Russian colonization period have been unearthed in Kodiak, Alaska.

Investigation of a blockhouse thought to have been built by Henry VIII will begin next week. The blockhouse was placed on the edge of a sea cliff in Wales. “We want to look at this last bit, which is hanging on the cliff edge, as we think this is probably the last opportunity we’ll have before it becomes too dangerous to excavate,” said archaeologist Pete Crane of England’s National Park Authority.

Tourists are now swarming over Cambodia’s temples of Angkor—some 2.5 million people are expected to visit this year, up from 60,000 in 1999. “Tourist management at Angkor sucks and they’ve had 20 years to work on it,” said Jeff Morgan, executive director of the Global Heritage Fund.

A portable CT scanner was used to produce images of Egyptian and Peruvian mummies at Chicago’s Field Museum. The mummies had been placed in coffins that could not be opened without damaging them. “This project is the beginning of a major project to scan and understand all of our mummies,” said James Philips, a curator at the museum.

In 14 months, Chinese miners will take over Mes Aynak, Afghanistan’s fifth-century Buddhist monastery. “I just wish we had more time and money to save it all,” said lead archaeologist Mohammed Rabi.

A construction project in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, turned up piles of trash, but state archaeologist Edna Feighner says that the old landfill is not historically significant.

The government of the Canadian territory of Nunavut has denied an archaeological permit to a Chicago man who wants to search for Sir John Franklin’s grave. The Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth determined him to be unqualified.

 

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Monday, July 11
July 11, 2011

Construction workers in Mexico found an eighth-century monolith featuring the Aztec rain god, Tlaloc. Archaeologists from the Institute of Anthropology and History think the monument is linked to the nearby archaeological site of Xochicalco.

Lawrence Rothfield of the University of Chicago thinks that museum guards and others who defend heritage sites should be armed and trained in crowd control.

Volunteers are assisting with the excavation of Camp Hoffman, a Union Army encampment during the Civil War, which was situated on Lafayette Square in West Baltimore, Maryland.

Parks Canada archaeologists will construct a photographic mosaic of the HMS Investigator, a British ship abandoned in the Canadian Arctic in 1853 during a search for the lost ships of the Franklin Expedition. Then they will use a laser to map the wreck. “We’re going to be diving in an area where it may take six or seven hours for an airplane to get us if we run into problems, so we’re going to be very, very cautious about the diving,” said team leader Marc-André Bernier.

Another three years will be needed to repair Nero’s Domus Aurea. “The place is a colander and the restoration is so delicate that it required much calm and time,” said Luigi Malnati, director general for archaeology of Italy’s Culture Ministry.

 

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