Researchers from the University of Chicago discovered an Iron Age funerary stele at the ancient city of Sam’al, in southeastern Turkey. The stele is carved with an image of the deceased, who is thought to have been cremated, and an inscription proclaiming that his soul inhabited the stone.   The New York Times also has an article on the stele.

A village that once housed between 600 and 700 Iroquoians between 1300 and 1400 A.D. was excavated in Ontario. Five longhouses, arrowheads, burned corn, pipes, pottery, and bone tools were unearthed, in addition to human remains.  

A German artist using international funding is planning to re-create the Colossus of Rhodes on a pier in the harbor of the Greek island.  

Libya’s government announced that it will coordinate the work of foreign and local archaeologists. “We will open our arms to the best scientists from Japan to the United States,” said Giuma Anag, chair of the government’s archaeology department.  

A traveler left his mark on a block of red sandstone in Saudi Arabia 1,300 years ago, writing in Arabic with a system of diacritical marks.  Scholars are using this new clue to try to determine whether or not the Qur’an, which now lacks diacritical marks, ever had them.  

Customs officials at Bulgaria’s Sofia Airport seized…something. It doesn’t look like a sculpture of Augustus as this story claims, or even genuine, for that matter.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, November 18, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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