The World Archaeological Congress (WAC) is holding an international conference in Ramallah on “overcoming structural violence,” and the “negative impact of politics on archaeology.” The Israel Antiquities Authority claims not to have been invited, according to The Jerusalem Post. The WAC has responded that Israeli archaeologists were not intentionally excluded and that that conference was widely publicized. “Since it is difficult for Palestinian archaeologists to interact with the international community, we decided to bring members of the international community to Palestinian archaeologists,” said WAC president Claire Smith.

Early Paleolithic hunters living in central Israel caught big game and shared it, but they were less organized, less efficient, and less specialized than later Paleolithic hunters, says Mary C. Stiner of the University of Arizona. “This might not seem like a big deal to the uninitiated, but there’s a lot of speculation as to whether people of the late Lower Paleolithic were able to hunt at all,” she explained.  

Artifacts have been recovered from the mass graves at the 1916 battlefield of Fromelles, France. “We are getting glimpses of what life was like on the Western Front,” said archaeologist Louise Loe.  

Analysis of skeletons at the Newton sugar cane plantation on Barbados has shown that the enslaved people who labored there came from different regions in Africa. “We now have a method that enables us to identify first-generation captives among the burials and to trace their origins back to their native Africa,” said archaeologist Hannes Schroeder of the University of Oxford.  

An oak tree bearing an engraved mark has reportedly been unearthed in Prague. Archaeologists say the star-shaped mark is 1,000 years old.  

Tarek el Awady, director of scientific research for Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, has traveled to the State Archaeological Museum of Hyderabad, India, in order to restore a mummy that is peeling and cracking. The mummy has been on display at the museum since 1930.  

Three heritage groups in Scotland are working together to build a replica longboat using Bronze Age tools. The boat will be modeled after the Carpow longboat, discovered in Loch Tay.  

Surprise! Students retain more information from movies than from their textbooks, whether or not the information is accurate.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, August 13, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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