Newsbriefs, July/August 1996 - Archaeology Magazine Archive


Index of Newsbriefs	Volume 49 Number 4, July/August 1996

Click on the title of a newsbrief to see the full text.

Peopling of South America	A cave in the Amazon River basin near the town of Monte Alegre in northern Brazil has yielded evidence that people migrating from North to South America some 11,000 years ago did not settle exclusively in the Andes as previously believed. In addition, two fossilized skeletons in a cave at Serranopolis in central Brazil are tentatively dated to 11,000 years ago.
Imperial Jade Shroud	A magnificent shroud of 4,000 wafer-thin jade plaques, sewn together with gold thread and decorated with gold flowers and buttons, has been found with the body of Liu Wu, the third king of the state of Chu during the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 9).
Ancient Canoes Found	The remains of about 50 dugout canoes, some nearly 2,500 years old, have been found along a three-mile stretch of the Brivet River, a tributary of the Loire in central France.
Who's Buried in Margarita's Tomb?	Archaeologists excavating the richest tomb ever found at the ancient Maya city of Copán in Honduras were surprised to discover that its occupant was a woman.
Shootin' & Drinkin'	Hundreds of empty, unfired rifle cartridges excavated from a former soldier station in Yellowstone National Park suggest that soldiers who were supposed to protect buffalo and elk may instead have been shooting them.
Sodom and Gomorrah Update	Two geologists think they know how the infamous biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. Graham Harris and Tony Beardow argue in the Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology that the land near the Dead Sea on which the cities may have stood literally liquefied in an earthquake, swallowing them up ca. 1900 B.C.
Roman Coin Hoard	Nine hundred Roman coins in a glass urn were recently uncovered during salvage excavations in advance of work on a highway junction between Caen and Bayeux in northern France.
Dao in Dialogue	A manuscript of the Dao de Jing, the book that forms the cornerstone of Daoist religious thought in China, has been found in a tomb in Jingmen City, Hubei Province.
Early Honduran Village Life	A site in the Ulua River Valley of northern Honduras has yielded the earliest evidence of village life in the area, dating to the end of the Early Formative period, ca. 1100-900 B.C., as well as pottery in the style of the Olmec civilization, which flourished 400 miles west on the Gulf Coast after ca. 1200 B.C.
Maronite Mummies	The 700-year-old naturally mummified remains of three women and five children have been found in the Asi-el-Hadath grotto of northern Lebanon's Qadisha Valley.
Field Notes	Treasure Trove Amended; Luang Prabang Cited by UNESCO; Hadrian's Villa Restoration; Indian Heritage Hotels; Sticky Tools; Shiva Head in Dispute