A tomb said to belong to Isisnofret, a granddaughter of Ramses II, has been discovered in Saqqara by a team of Japanese Egyptologists. Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, told reporters he thinks the tomb may be older.

Will the proposed underwater museum in Alexandria’s harbor be built? “You can’t build an underwater museum in hotel meeting rooms. You have to get down there and do the scientific work to see what is practical and what isn’t,” said Ashraf Sabri, who runs a local dive center.  

Scholars are trying to crack the bizarre southwest script found on Iron Age tablets in southern Portugal. “We have a lot of doubts. We can read characters and see the phonetics in action, but when we try to understand what they actually mean we have a lot of problems,” said Amilcar Guerra of the University of Lisbon.  

An archaic American Indian farming site could be destroyed by the development of a commuter rail line in Draper, Utah. Corn pollen suggests that corn was grown 3,000 years ago, possibly 1,000 years earlier than previously thought. Cooking pits were also found. “It could reshape our understanding of the development of agriculture in the West,” said consulting archaeologist Matthew Seddon.  

George Washington’s boyhood home was finally found last year. This article tells how archaeologists solved the mystery, using a painting in a private collection and an inventory of the house taken in 1743.  

A Chamorros village is being excavated in Guam before the expansion of a U.S. naval base. Fish hooks made of shell, adze heads, and pottery have been found.  

Seven skeletons and bits of pottery were unearthed during the construction of a waste water treatment plant in Aztec, New Mexico. “Unfortunately we haven’t got any of the original context left. This is where things become more complicated. Not knowing where they were, how they were laying, what kind of grave they were in, the only thing we can do is look at what we have, which is the human remains, ” said contract archaeologist Peter Carter.  

Here’s a quick wrap-up of what different countries are doing to reclaim their lost archaeological treasures.  

An Alabama woman found a military dog tag and small metal emblem that may have adorned a Zippo cigarette lighter while walking near her home. A Blue Angels jet had crashed there 50 years earlier, killing the pilot. “I stood there and the sun was setting and I held this in my hand and I said, ‘No one has touched this since it was around his neck, and I’m touching it,'” she said.  

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, March 3, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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