A Turkish and German team has unearthed a 5,000-year-old Venus figurine and a stone seal at Çanakkale. “We also found stone axes, [and] well-processed and embellished pots and spindle-whorls, which were used for spinning wool,” said Rüstem Aslan of the University of Tubingen.

French archaeologists have decided that a prehistoric site on an island in the United Arab Emirates isn’t a butchering site for the Dugong dugon, or sea cow, but a sanctuary dedicated to worshipping it.    

Today’s Scandinavians are not the direct descendants of hunter-gatherers who lived in the region during the Stone Age, according to a DNA study conducted by teams from Sweden, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. “Some form of migration to Scandinavia took place, probably at the onset of the agricultural Stone Age. The extent of this migration is as of yet impossible to determine,” said Petra Molnar of Stockholm University.  

When a gravestone turned up in a driveway in South Dakota, the homeowners were concerned that bones would turn up, too.  

Students from Mainz University are excavating a second or third century A.D. Roman site near a U.S. Army housing construction project in Wiesbaden, Germany. “Up to four legions of the Roman army were stationed here, which is significant because there were 25 to 30 legions in the entire army,” said student Guido Schnell.  

More than 1,400 illegal artifacts and some human bones recovered from a collector in Washington State have been repatriated to local American Indian tribes. Other artifacts will remain in government custody. “It saddens me to think my ancestors may have been lying in somebody’s basement,” said Jim SiJohn, an elder with the Spokane Tribe of Indians.  

There’s a reported dispute between English landowner Fred Johnson and his friend, Terry Herbert, who discovered the Staffordshire Hoard with his metal detector on Johnson’s farm. “Me and Terry agreed to keep it all low-key and I thought that would be the case. It is not about the money for me. It’s an incredible find for the country and that’s what is more important,” Johnson told journalists.  

That tiny gem engraved with the likeness of Alexander the Great was excavated from Tel Dor by Megan Webb, 28, of Philadelphia. This article tells her story.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, September 25, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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