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2008-2012


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Monday, October 5
October 5, 2009

 About a mile away from Stonehenge, archaeologists have found evidence of a stone circle they’ve dubbed “Bluehenge.”

The economic recession has produced more looting of archaeological sites in England. “We are getting attacks on private land where the nighthawks have no permission to be. We are seeing sites die the death of a thousand cuts as finds are removed,” said Pete Wilson of English Heritage.  

Archaeologist Winson Hurst grew up in Blanding, Utah, where they say pot hunting is a way of life, and where he is now seen as a “turncoat.” This article talks about life in Blanding after the federal artifact raids.   Here’s more information on the law.  

Frescoed Roman tombs were discovered in a cave in southern Lebanon by a team of Japanese archaeologists. “The walls at the entrance are decorated with frescoes of plants, animals, and colorful birds, and parts of the floor are covered in mosaic,” announced Nader Siqlawi, Directorate General of Antiquities.  

Second-century A.D. jars have been found in a Roman shipwreck off the coast of Cyprus. “Its location in shallow waters suggest that either the vessel was nearing an intended port-of-call, or else was engaged in coastal trade, moving products to market over short distances up and down the coast,” according to an announcement by the Department of Antiquities.  

A 3,000-year-old wooden box has reportedly been found at the ancient copper mines of Mitterberg Mountain.  

Marine archaeologists from the Florida Aquarium continue to map wrecks in the Hillsborough River and Tampa Bay. They’ve found Civil War blockade runners, battleships, and a Volkswagen.  

The famed Egyptian bust of Nefertiti has been moved to its own display room in the newly renovated Neues Museum in Berlin.  

The perfectly preserved baby mammoth known as Lyuba will travel to Chicago’s Field Museum.  

Workers digging a new sewage system in rural Turkey discovered a pot of Ottoman gold coins.  

Chemist Luigi Garlaschelli says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin using materials and techniques available in the Middle Ages. The disputed Christian relic was dated between 1260 and 1390 by carbon dating tests performed in 1988.

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Friday, October 2
October 2, 2009

 A polychrome mural was uncovered on the face of a temple at Peru’s Lambayeque site of Chotuna.

A pit beneath the back room of an inn in Staffordshire, England, yielded an intact, seventeenth-century witch bottle. Archaeologists will see if it contains nail clippings, hair, bellybutton lint, pins, or nails intended to ward off witches.  

Archaeologist Rob Symmons thinks that the sculpture of a young boy unearthed at England’s Fishbourne Roman Palace may represent a young Nero. “We have always assumed he was related to the Royal family who lived here but it may be that it is even more special and is a rare depiction of Nero,” he said. Tests will be conducted on the head later this month.  

Researchers have analyzed the tooth enamel of people buried in a Roman cemetery in Hampshire, England, and found that some of them were migrants from southern and central Europe.   

A flag flown by South Carolina Citadel cadets during the Civil War has turned up in museum storage in Iowa.  

Articles about 4.4 million-year-old “Ardi,” the earliest-known human ancestor, continue to appear. This one has a slide show of digital images and sketches of the reconstructed Ardipithecus ramidus skeleton.    Reuters has marked the discovery on a map of Ethiopia.  

A professor of history in Hungary reportedly thinks that he has found the cellar of the house where the Duke of Wallachia, Vlad III Tepes, lived in the 1460s. A 1489 document refers to the building as “Drakulya House.” 

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