Traces of a sod-and-stone wall on Baffin Island could represent the second Viking structure to be found in the New World. A whalebone spade, yarn, decorated wood objects, and whetstones have also been unearthed.

Fragments of a spiral column that may have been part of a Roman temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis have been discovered near the courthouse in Florence, Italy. Artifacts from the temple have been found in the area for the past 300 years, but the actual temple has not yet been found.  

Did seafaring people follow a “kelp highway” along the Pacific Coast of the Americas 15,000 years ago?  

At least four sets of human remains were uncovered in Creel Bay, North Dakota, during the construction of a dike. The bones probably date to 1100 A.D.  

In Hampshire, England, workers uncovered the burial of a sixteenth-century man, who appears to have been buried a few hundred yards outside of the village’s churchyard. “You do get instances of criminals or suicides being buried outside churchyards, but they are normally in designated areas,” said archaeologist Tracey Matthews.  

In Scotland, archaeologists will look for the foundations of the “lost mansion” of Jacobite sympathizer James Erskine, Lord Grange. The house served as a hospital and orphanage in the nineteenth century before it was demolished.  

Mike Boehm of the Los Angeles Times talked with Charles Stanish of UCLA’s Cotsen Institute of Archaeology about his essay, “Forging Ahead, Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love eBay,” for the May/June issue of ARCHAEOLOGY. Boehm also spoke with representatives from eBay, art gallery owners, and archaeologist Oscar White Muscarella, who disagrees with Stanish. “What’s going to decrease plundering is n forgeries, it’s only if governments take more action,” he said.   

The Society for Industrial Archaeology will meet in Pittsburgh and tour some of its industrial relics, described in the Post-Gazette. “We study American history through the industrial remains of the past. Pittsburgh was the most important industrial city of America, so it’s got a lot of important sites and important people associated with them,” said Bode Morin of Michigan Technological University.  

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, May 29, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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