Customs authorities in New York City confiscated two red ceramic vases smuggled out of Italy.

In Iran, part of a mound that may have covered a Sassanid city was destroyed by bulldozers. Earlier this year, officials from the Khuzestan Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts Department visited the mound and wanted to register it on the National Heritage List.  

The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased a 4,000-year-old fragment of a pharoanic shrine from a collector in order to return it to Egypt.  

A California man who pleaded guilty after he posted a video of himself looting a Yurok Tribe burial ground in a state park has received jail time, community service, and a fine.  

It seems that the Battle of Bosworth Field, fought in 1485 at the culmination of England’s War of the Roses, took place two miles away from the monument commemorating it. Fired ammunition from early handguns has been found at the correct location. “For me the most important thing about the discoveries at Bosworth is that it opens the door for archaeology to explore the origins of firepower,” said Glen Foard from the Battlefields Trust.  

Two gravestones covered with mysterious carvings have been unearthed under a gateway leading from the medieval stronghold of the Knights Templar in Scotland and an adjoining mansion. “It might be sheep shears, or they could be hawking bells, the kinds of things that might be attached to a falcon. They could even be a made-up piece of heraldry,” said archaeologist David Connolly.  

The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, has been redesigned and will reopen next month.  

The teen-aged son of an archaeologist discovered a submerged temple while swimming off the Mediterranean coast of Montenegro. “I’ve been dragged around a lot of ancient ruins, so if it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t have looked twice,” he explained.  

Learn about the Waldseemuller map, drawn in 1507.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, October 28, 2009. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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