Archaeologists have returned to the Great House Pueblo at the Chimney Rock Archaeological Area in southwestern Colorado for the first time in 30 years. They think the Great House was constructed to view the lunar standstill that occurs approximately every 18 years. “We’ve found pieces of burned beams we can carbon-date to help verify whether the major building episodes here correspond with lunar standstills,” said University of Colorado graduate student Brenda Todd. 

 Artifacts discovered beneath a nineteenth-century cabin at the Cowell Lime Works Historic District include a mother-of-pearl hairpin, suggesting that the male workers had contact with women. “The reason we’re doing the archaeology is to try to understand what the everyday life of the workers was like. There’s not much record of that,” said environmental planner and archaeologist Sally Morgan. The lime works has become part of the University of California, Santa Cruz.  

A skull uncovered at a construction site in West Virginia last week may have belonged to a 13- or 14-year-old African American girl, and could date to the early nineteenth century.  

Construction workers in northern California unearthed the skeleton of an American Indian thought to have belonged to the Bay Miwok tribe. The remains are being held by Contra Costa County officials until the state decides which tribal descendants have a legal claim to the bones.  

The High Arctic search for Sir John Franklin’s ships, the Erebus and Terror, has been called off for the summer by the Canadian government. “Unfortunately this particular season, the Coast Guard had other scientific programs that they had to prioritize. But we intend to continue with the survey next year,” said Ryan Harris of Parks Canada.   

According to a report presented by UNESCO officials at a meeting in Paris, “The use of Babylon as a military base was a grave encroachment on this internationally known archaeological site.” This article has a few more details and photographs.  

There’s also more information on the 69 artifacts returned to Iraq by the Netherlands.  

Al-Ahram describes the museum show, “Tutankhamun, The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs,” now on display at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, July 10, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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