Heather Horn, writing for The Atlantic Wire, offers links to various articles about the collapse of the House of the Gladiators at Pompeii and the continuing deterioration of the World Heritage Site.  Workers at Italian museums, archaeological sites, and libraries have gone on strike to protest proposed budget cuts. “Everything. Everything is at risk. We talk a lot about Pompeii because Pompeii is the most-visited archaeological site in Italy. But there are, every day, situations like Pompeii, and you don’t hear about these,” said Tsao Cevoli, president of Italy’s National Association of Archaeologists.  The Guardian has posted recent photographs of Pompeii.

What are being called the world’s oldest metal tools have been unearthed in Plocnik, Serbia. “It really is sensational,” said Ernst Pernicka of Germany’s Tuebingen University. The axes, hammers, hooks, and needles were found interspersed with other artifacts in the village, which was destroyed by fire some 7,000 years ago.  

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City will return 19 artifacts from King Tut’s tomb to Egypt by 2012. Howard Carter, who opened the tomb in 1923, had signed a waiver promising that all of the tomb’s artifacts would remain in Egypt.  

Did the Maya build their pyramids as spiritual “echo machines?” The stepped structures transform the sound of clapping into the chirp of the quetzal bird, and footsteps into raindrop sounds, both of which were sacred to the Maya. “Acoustics are the new rage in archaeology,” commented Lisa Lucero of the University of Illinois.  

Robots have been used to explore the tunnel discovered beneath Teotihuacan’s Temple of Quetzacoatl, and it appears to be stable enough for archaeologists to enter it. “All of the passage, more than 100 meters (yards) long, was excavated in the rock perfectly, and in some places you can even see the marks of the tools the people of Teotihuacan used to make it,” said Sergio Gomez of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. Could the tombs of the city’s rulers branch off this passageway?  

The mummified remains of six fifteenth-century dogs have been found in an adobe pyramid at Pachacamac, in coastal Peru. “Their strong teeth lead us to believe that they are domestic dogs that were used for hunting,” said Enrique Angulo.  

A CAT scan of a concretion retrieved from the site of an eighteenth-century shipwreck off the coast of St. Augustine, Florida, revealed a well-preserved flintlock pistol.  

Here’s more information on a Chinese mining company’s plans to extract copper from beneath an ancient Buddhist monastery and 12 other Buddhist sites in Afghanistan. “This mine is going to be a test. Is it possible to develop this country and also preserve its history?” asked Philippe Marquis of the French archaeological delegation in Afghanistan.  

The remains of astronomer Tycho Brahe have been exhumed in Prague, where he died in 1601. Tests done in 1901 suggest that Brahe died of mercury poisoning. Scientists will now conduct a CT scan and special X-rays to try determine how much mercury he ingested.  

Urbanization fostered stronger immune systems in their inhabitants, according to scientists from University College London. “If cities increase the amount of disease people are exposed to, shouldn’t they also, over time, make them natural places for disease resistance to evolve?” asked biologist Mark Thomas.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, November 15, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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