Israeli archaeologist Ehud Netzer has died after falling at Herodion. He was 76.

Pressure flaking, a sophisticated technique used to make stone tools, was invented in southern Africa 75,000 years ago, according to researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder. It had been thought that pressure flaking was first employed 20,000 years ago in Europe.  You can compare a tool made by pressure flaking with one made by a hammer at Science Now.  

X-rays have revealed that two Civil War era dolls shipped to the Confederacy from Europe had hollowed-out heads. Experts think that the dolls may have been used to smuggle morphine and quinine past Union blockades. “In all of the research that I have been able to do, these are the only two confirmed smuggling dolls that I’ve been able to find,” said Catherine M. Wright of The Museum of the Confederacy.  

The wreck of the USS Narcissus, a Civil War tugboat, may be designated a Florida Underwater Archaeological Preserve. Shifting sands and a dredging project have revealed the boat’s engine, propeller, and part of its boiler.  

Roman burials, artifacts, and a defensive wall have been unearthed at a public building project in Scotland.  

A man with a metal detector discovered a late Iron Age and early Roman burial ground for cremation urns in southeastern England. “I found the edge of the first one and I cleaned around it and I noticed the white bone inside. Then I called the archaeologists,” he said. Twenty-two urns were found in all.  

Analysis of the headless skeletons found at a Roman cemetery in York, England, shows that some of the men came from other parts of England and as far away as Eastern Europe. “We know that the population of Roman York is quite diverse anyway, because a lot of traders, for example, were coming from various parts of the Empire,” said Kurt Hunter-Mann of the York Archaeological Trust.  

Nineteenth-century artifacts and human remains have been uncovered in San Francisco, at the Fort Mason compound.  

In Jamaica, nine British cannons and 21 cannonballs were excavated during construction work on the Kingston Waterfront.  

Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe died in 1601 and was buried in Prague’s Tyn Church. An international team of scientists will try to determine what killed him next month. “The box with the remains will be taken out and transferred to the anthropological deposit of the National Museum of Prague where it will be opened,” explained Czech archaeologist Zdenek Dragoun.  

The state of Idaho has used some of its federal stimulus money to organize the artifacts discovered during highway construction, creating 15 part-time, temporary jobs. 

The state of Pennsylvania is tracking down the 1,800 artifacts that Auditor General Jack Wagner said were missing. “We’re dealing with 100 years of collecting and six or seven different inventory numbering systems used between 1905 and present day. When you’ve got different generations of people trying to manage collections with different numbering systems, you’re bound to have gaps,” explained Mary Jane Miller, head of collections management for the State Museum Commission.  

A graduate student is diligently working to catalog and organize the 1,400-year-old artifacts from Montana’s Pictograph Caves. This article has plenty of background information on the caves and the Freemont people who lived in them, as well what has been learned recently about “the most important prehistoric site in Montana.”

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, October 29, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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