Italian Culture Ministry officials are making a list of landmarks, including a museum of archaeology and art housed in a sixteenth-century castle, that were damaged by the earthquake in L’Aquila. “The historic center of L’Aquila has been devastated,” said Giuseppe Proietti.

A 16-year-old boy was killed and other teenager was injured when the roof of a man-made sandstone cave collapsed on them. The cave was one of many known as the Hermitage Caves in Shropshire, England, although archaeologists have not been able to pinpoint when the caves were made.  

To the south, road construction crews may have uncovered sandstone slabs from the foundation of Liverpool Castle, built in the early thirteenth century to protect the new port of Liverpool. What was left of the castle after the Civil War was demolished in 1726.

Beneath Boston’s Old North Church, archaeologist Jane Lyden Rousseau has found what could be the only charnel house in New England, and 37 tombs containing the remains of notable early Americans.   

Erosion is claiming a Chumash village on San Miguel Island, and other archaeological sites on the Channel Islands, for the Pacific Ocean. Early seafaring hunter gatherers may have stopped off at these islands on their way to North America. “We’re never going to stop marine erosion. That’s why we really have to come up with ingenious ways to salvage the sites while we can,” said Torben Rick of the Smithsonian Institution.  

Here’s another article on the decision to open up the “bent” pyramid near the Egyptian village of Dahshur to tourists. “This is going to be an adventure,” Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, told reporters.  

Eliane Karp-Toledo, former first lady of Peru, spoke at Yale University, calling for the repatriation of all the Machu Picchu artifacts housed there.   She referred to a letter written by Hiram Bingham and sent to Yale in 1916, in which he urged the university to return the Inca artifacts he had found.   

The J. Paul Getty Museum will return a first-century B.C. fresco to Italy. Their fragment was shown to be part of a larger landscape fresco, along with a fragment owned by a private collector.  

Scientists are examining each of the stones in Jerusalem’s Western Wall. Engineering tests indicated that some of the newer stones are deteriorating and present a safety hazard to tourists and pilgrims.  

Five foot-shaped enclosures, said to be used by ancient Israelites as a mark of ownership and as ceremonial centers at the beginning of the Iron Age, have been unearthed in the Jordan Valley and Samaria, according to Adam Zertal of the University of Haifa.  

Explore archaeology with Legos and enjoy!

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, April 7, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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