The Telegraph reports that in a taped bedroom conversation between Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and a prostitute, Berlusconi revealed that he had found 30 Phoenician tombs on his estate on Sardinia. “If the presence of these 30 previously unknown tombs on Berlusconi’s estate is confirmed it represents a very significant discovery,” said Giuseppina Manca di Mores, a member of Italy’s National Association of Archaeologists.

A scuba diver spotted a group of stone blocks off the east coast of Calabria, near the Italian town of Squillace. It is possible the ruins may be part of the ancient Greek colony of Scylletium.   

Here are a few photographs of the Roman shipwrecks discovered off the coast of the Italian island of Ventotene.  

The luxury Roman villas of Stabiae, located to the south of Pompeii, were also buried in ash with the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. This review of a museum show at the Complesso di San Nicolo in Ravenna describes some of the fresco paintings that have been recovered.  

A metal detectorist has discovered the oldest known Roman coin in Britain.  

Ten-thousand-year-old flint tools and charcoal have been uncovered in Birmingham, England. “We have found stone age tools in other parts of Birmingham, … but they had been displaced. This area was in a hollow and had not been disturbed. We could see evidence of the whole settlement,” said Mike Hodder, Birmingham City Council archaeologist.  

A 20,000-year-old stone hearth is being called the oldest evidence of human settlement in Taiwan.  

An image of an angel near the Haghia Sophia’s dome has been revealed by restoration workers. The church’s Byzantine mosaics were covered with plaster when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453.    

The Dutch government and the Leiden University Medical Center have returned the severed head of King Badu Bonsu II to Ghana. Maj. Gen. Jan Verveer took the head in 1838, in retaliation for the killing of two Dutch emissaries whose heads were displayed in the king’s home. 

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, July 24, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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