Italian archaeologist Maria Rosaria Belgiorno says she has uncovered the oldest temple on Cyprus, at Pyrgos-Mavroraki, where she has also found a news-making ancient perfumery. Maria Hadjicosti of the Cyprus Antiquities Department said, “We cannot dismiss the claim but we cannot verify it either.”

A piece of ironware from the Kaman-Kalehoyuk site in Turkey is thought to be about 4,000 years old, making it the world’s oldest steel.  

Maciej Henneberg of the University of Adelaide has been the subject of disciplinary action for serious misconduct from his university for his criticism of Mike Morwood’s theories on the “Hobbits,” the tiny hominids from the Indonesian island of Flores. Henneberg wrote a book that Morwood says “contains many factual errors.”  

A cast of the Hobbit skeleton will be displayed at Stony Brook University next month.  

Rice was cultivated in southeastern China between 6,600 and 6,900 years ago, according to a new study of grains from the Neolithic Hemudu sites, which were discovered in the 1970s. Domestic rice has to be threshed, but wild rice will lose its coat automatically.  

A private historical organization in Florida has hired an underwater archaeologist to look for three Confederate cargo ships that burned in 1863. Blockade runners tried to get past Union ships in smaller ports in northern and central Florida after the major port at New Orleans was captured. 

Here’s some more information on the mapping of Charleston Harbor in Civil War News. “The main thrust is to look at this as a battlefield,” said underwater archaeologist Jim Spirek of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.  

The alleged kingpin of a group that stole statues from temples and sold them in a gallery or smuggled them out of the country has been arrested in India’s state of Tamil Nadu. “He co-ordinated with various groups and was behind the majority of the idol thefts in the state,” said G. Thilakavathi of a special CB-CID team.  

Bottle hunters are suspected of digging up and destroying a site in Christchurch, New Zealand, that had been prepared for excavation by students from Otago University.  

BBC News has a story on the discovery of some of the remains of the 57 missing Irishmen of Duffy’s Cut.  

Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, chronicles the restoration of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara in his blog. He and his team have found a previously unknown shaft near the northern end of the eastern face of the pyramid.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, March 27, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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