The stage and floor of what is thought to be Shakespeare’s first theater, built in 1576, has been unearthed just outside of the sixteenth-century limits of London. “The Lord Mayor actually passed a decree that there shouldn’t be any theatrical performances in the city… so just on the edge of the city is actually, classically, where you find all the slightly wilder, slightly more fun activities going on,” said Taryn Nixon of the Museum of London.   A piece of pottery discovered at the site bears a bearded face, framed by long hair and a ruff, which could be an early portrait of the Bard.

A South Korean diplomat in Iran allegedly tried to smuggle a stone fragment from Persepolis out of the country in a baby carriage.    

Last month, 3.4 tons of stolen antiquities confiscated at London’s Heathrow Airport over the past six years were returned to Afghanistan. “None of the Heathrow objects came from the [National Museum of Afghanistan]. They are from recently illegally excavated sites exported without permit,” said American archaeologist Fredrik Hiebert.

Some well-preserved leather shoe soles found in a muddy trash dump in Lyon, France, will help scientists understand how to conserve other leather artifacts. The soles are thought to date from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries.  

Here’s a sonar image of a wreck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Galveston, Texas. It may represent the Caroline, a merchant ship that left Galveston in 1864 carrying a load of cotton, but it was unable to break the Union blockade. The crew ran the ship aground and set it on fire so that it would not be captured.  

Experts at the Louisiana State Museum will examine artifacts from another unidentified nineteenth-century vessel found in the Gulf of Mexico. “It’s a tantalizing mystery. Who knows who was on that ship and what they were up to?” said a spokesman for the museum.  

A replica of the 1667 Brick Chapel has been erected in Historic St. Mary’s City, Maryland, using clues gathered during 20 years of research and excavation. “The design ‘fits in with what the Jesuits were doing in the rest of the world,” said director Henry Miller.  

A skull from Lazzaretto Vecchio, the cemetery for plague victims on the edge of the Venice lagoon, had been impaled through the mouth with a brick. According to Matteo Borrini of Florence University, it was thought that plague was spread by “vampires” that chewed on their shrouds.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, March 9, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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