Newsbriefs, May/June 1997 - Archaeology Magazine Archive


Index of Newsbriefs	Volume 50 Number 3, May/June 1997

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

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Rare Cypriot Sculptures	Six limestone sculptures--four lions and two sphinxes--were discovered during maintenance and restoration work on one of two sixth-century B.C. royal tombs at Tamassos, 12 miles south of Nicosia, Cyprus.
Early Hominids in Siberia?	The site of Diring Yuriakh in central Siberia has been dated to ca. 300,000 years ago, suggesting that hominids may have settled the area 270,000 years earlier than previously thought.
Blackbeard's Flagship	Queen Anne's Revenge, flagship of the infamous pirate Blackbeard, may have been found in 20 feet of water less than two miles off Beaufort, North Carolina. The remains include more than 15 large cannon, two anchors, a bronze bell inscribed with the date 1709, and a portion of an oak hull.
Roman Trade with the Canary Islands	Excavations on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands have turned up the first securely dated evidence of Roman trade with the archipelago. The settlement of El Bebedero yielded about 100 Roman potsherds, nine pieces of metal, and one piece of glass. The artifacts were found in strata dated between the first and fourth centuries A.D.
Palaeolithic Archers?	Reexamination of human bones from a 13,000-year-old Upper Palaeolithic burial in San Teodoro Cave, Sicily, has led to the startling discovery of a small fragment of flint, probably part of an arrowhead, embedded in the pelvis of what is thought to have been an adult female.
World's Oldest Spears	Radiocarbon dating has confirmed that three wooden spears found in a coal mine in Schöningen, near Hannover, Germany, are the oldest complete hunting weapons ever found. They suggest that early man was able to hunt, and was not just a scavenger. The development of such weapons may have been crucial to the settling of Stone Age northern Europe.
Kennewick Update 1	Kennewick Man, the 8,400-year-old skeleton discovered last July in Washington State, may yet see a laboratory.
Buried Bureaucratica	Tens of thousands of bamboo strips and wooden boards recording judicial, accounting, and regional government matters dating between A.D. 232 and 238 in the Three Kingdoms period have been found in an ancient well during construction in the southern Chinese city of Changsha.
Shiloh Threatened	Erosion of the banks of the Tennessee River has rendered Shiloh National Military Park's Dill Branch ravine, considered the most scenic spot in the park, inaccessible by car. The battle at "Bloody Shiloh," fought April 6 and 7, 1862, resulted in some 24,000 casualties and secured the West for the Union.
"The Fritz Ritz"	A cement-lined pond that surrounded a flower garden and a moated miniature castle with clay figurines are among the decorative remains of a World War II prisoner-of-war camp recently excavated near Hearne, Texas. As many as 4,800 soldiers of Germany's Afrika Corps, divided into pro- and anti-Nazi groups, were housed here from 1943 to 1945.
Field Notes	French Archaeologists Strike; Dutch Fort Orange; Côa Valley Gets a Museum; Strachey's Coat of Arms