Nine toppled megaliths in Dartmoor, England, were aligned to the rising of the midsummer sun and the setting of the midwinter sun, and may have been used to mark time. Peat taken from above and below the stones allowed scientists to date them to 3500 B.C. The Dartmoor stones could be older than Stonehenge, and may have been used in funerary rituals.

A team from Colorado State University has discovered an ancient urban center of the Purepecha Empire in Mexico. “Much of this settlement is similar to a modern-day suburb with hundreds of small house mounds where ordinary families lived and carried out activities,” said archaeologist Christopher Fisher. 

Brick walls and a staircase that could be the remains of a medieval synagogue have been found beneath a take-out restaurant in Northampton, England. 

3D laser technology is being used to record Moriori dendroglyphs carved on trees in New Zealand’s Chatham Islands. The Moriori lived on the islands before the arrival of Maori and Europeans in 1835. The images are in danger of being lost to beetle infestation and erosion. 

U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart has denied the motion of a defendant in Utah’s illegal artifacts-trafficking case to throw out his statements to Bureau of Land Management agents at his home. 

Possible remains of people who died on September 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center have been found in a New York landfill. Workers have been sifting through the debris since 2007.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, April 9, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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