Neolithic stone circles, alignments, and corbelled roof tombs have been found in the Syrian Desert. “We’ve found something that’s never been found in the Middle East before,” said Robert Mason of the Royal Ontario Museum. Did the practice of building such stone landscapes have spread to Europe along with farming? “It’s such an important hypothesis if it’s right that it’s worth telling people about now,” he added.

A colossal red granite sculpture of the head of the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III has been unearthed at his mortuary temple in Luxor. Parts of his body and ceremonial beard have also been recovered. “Other statues have always had something broken: the tip of the nose, the face is eroded. But here, from the tip of the crown to the chin, it is so beautifully carved and polished, nothing is broken,” said lead excavator Hourig Sourouzian.   There’s more information on the statue at Discovery News.   

A building dating to the sixth century B.C. has been unearthed some 12 miles from Rome. An image of the Minotaur, an emblem of the Tarquins, was found on a terracotta fragment of the roof. Could this be the palace of the infamous Etruscan prince, Sextus Tarquinius? “Even if the precise attribution was not 100 percent correct, this would not detract much from the scholarly value of this wonderful discovery,” said Nicola Terrenato of the University of Michigan.  

In Iran, wooden covers installed to protect the stone stairways of Persepolis have created ideal conditions for the growth of fungus, lichen, and plants.  

South Korea will fund a new 13-mile road circling Cambodia’s Angkor temples.  

A fifteenth-century inscription on the wall of Salisbury Cathedral may be the earliest example of written English in a church. (Latin had been the language of churches.) “So far now the basic questions of what exactly the words are and why the text was written on the cathedral wall remain unanswered,” said archaeologist John Crook.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, March 1, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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