Archaeologists have found a wooden statue of a merman, whose eyes would have been made of precious stones, on a seventeenth-century ship off England’s southwest coast.  Iron cannon, barrels of cargo, pottery, a copper skillet, and a silver spoon were also recovered. “The whole vessel would have been a spectacular work of art,” said David Parham of Bournemouth University.   This second article on the wreck focuses on the Mediterranean shipworms that are destroying it.

Astronomers from Texas State University claim that the traditional date for the Roman invasion of Britain, August 26-27, has to be wrong because the tides of the English Channel were flowing in the wrong direction to carry Roman ships. They tested their idea in August 2007, when conditions were similar to those in 55 B.C.  

A rostrum was reportedly recovered off the coast of Sicily. Sebastiano Tusa, head of Sicily’s maritime affairs department, thinks the bronze ram was used during the Battle of Egadi in 241 B.C.  

The World Heritage Committee of UNESCO will meet this week, and spokesman Roni Amelan said “it’s a possibility” that Machu Picchu will be put on the organization’s endangered list. Some 800,000 people visit the Inca citadel each year.   

Iraqi authorities say that 82 antiquities, some of which were smuggled out of the country by Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, are now in the hands of a famous Kuwaiti businessman, according to a report in Al-Dar, and reprinted in the Arab Times.  

A large Hohokam settlement is being excavated ahead of a construction project in Marana, Arizona. Archaeologists have unearthed burials of people and dogs, pit houses, pottery, arrowheads, and bone tools. The site was inhabited until about 1350 A.D.  

Japanese-Americans who were imprisoned at Camp Amache in Colorado during World War II have been invited to return and assist archaeology students from the University of Denver. They are collecting artifacts and surveying  the site.  

The block where the National Constitution Center now stands in Philadelphia was an enclave of free black society in the eighteenth century. This article tells the stories of two of the residents, Robert Venable, who died in 1831 at the age of 102; and James Oronoko Dexter, whose home has been excavated.  

Southern slave owner Edward Gorsuch traveled to Christiana, Pennsylvania, to retrieve a runaway slave at the home of former slave William Parker. When Parker raised the alarm, his neighbors came to defend his home in a battle known as the “Resistance at Christiana of 1851.” Students from Kutztown University pinpointed the location of Parker House and uncovered thousands of artifacts. “If this were 1870 or 1880, Christiana and Harper’s Ferry were thought to be equally important. Now only a few local people and Civil War buffs know about it,” said archaeologist James Delle.  

The skull found in the attic of a house in Utah last month during roof repairs probably belonged to an American Indian woman, according to state archaeologist Ron Rood.  

Here’s another article and more photographs of the ancient Egyptian settlement at Tell Edfu.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, July 2, 2008. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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