A small gold vase that was seized from a German auction house has been held in the Roman-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz, by museum archaeologist Michael Mueller-Karpe, who had been asked to evaluate it. Both the auction house and the Iraqi government want the artifact, thought to be 4,500 years old and stolen from a royal grave in Iraq.    “I hope that, by Thursday, we will reach an amicable solution on this issue,” said Mueller-Karpe.

Israel’s military is paying more attention to the country’s archaeology. “We have 27,000 archaeological sites in Israel, most of which are in the Negev. And if you aren’t shown the remains, you would never know they were there,” said Yoram Haimi, an Israel Antiquities Authority archaeologist.  

An eighth-century bath was uncovered near the Hindu Ngempon Temple in Central Java, Indonesia.  

Steve Lekson of the University of Colorado talks about his new book, A History of the Ancient Southwest, and his idea that Pueblo peoples moved north and south along the 108^th meridian, building new settlements along its axis.  “The cultural response to something not working is to move north, and when that doesn’t work you move south. And then you move north again and then you move south again, and then you finally say the hell with it, I’m out of here, and you go down to Chihuahua,” he explained.  

For the past 11 years, Albert Goodyear of the University of South Carolina has been excavating the Topper site, where he has uncovered Clovis and pre-Clovis stone tools and evidence of tool making. Now he claims to have found a fire pit containing plant remains that date to at least 50,000 years ago.  

Students from the University of West Florida are in Pensacola Bay, excavating a 450-year-old ship from Don Tristan de Luna’s fleet.  

Surprise! Many of the 25,000-year-old hand stencils in Europe’s painted caves were made by women.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, June 30, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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