An entire suit of Roman armor and some weapons have been unearthed at the Roman fortress of Caerleon. “It’s in a pretty good condition considering Roman armor was usually made of iron and that does not survive very well in wet, cold soil like we have in Wales. It’s turned into rust but it still retains its outline,” said Peter Guest of Cardiff University.

A bronze Roman parade helmet, complete with face mask, has been unearthed by a treasure hunter in Cumbria, England. It could be sold at auction to the highest bidder because single bronze items are not covered by England’s Treasure Act. “This is an internationally important find and one which everyone agrees should be in a museum in this country and we are supporting the efforts of Tullie House museum in Carlisle to acquire it,” said Roger Bland, head of the Portable Antiquities Scheme.  

Centuries’ worth of grimy campfire soot has been removed from the intricate 2,000-year-old paintings on the rocks of Siq al-Barid, or Little Petra. “Everybody knows Petra for its rock monuments. Very few people do realize that these monuments were painted. We have to imagine Petra as a painted city,” said Stephen Rickerby of London’s Courtauld Institute.  Photographs of Petra’s cave art are posted at National Geographic Daily News. 

Conservation of the partial ship unearthed at the World Trade Center site continues at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory. Discovery News offers an update from head conservator Nichole Doub.  The vessel is most likely a brigantine, used for coastal trade, according to Warren Riess of the Darling Marine Center at the University of Maine.  

The Cottesloe family has granted a historian access to the diaries kept by their ancestor, Betsey Wynne, between the years of 1789 and 1857. Wynne’s experiences included sailing aboard her husband’s warship during the Napoleonic wars. “They’ll give a richer sense of the cosmopolitanism and culture of the generation that spanned this incredible period of change,” said historian Elaine Chalus of Bath Spa University.  

Archaeologists want to know more about what life was like for the enslaved African-Americans who lived at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia home. “The overall goal is to show what really happened at Monticello,” said Fraser D. Neiman of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.  

A report from Vietnam says that 8,000-year-old tools made from stones and animal bones have been found in Tham Choong Cave to the north.  

Since the end of communist rule, archaeological research has flourished in Bulgaria. “In order to get to the medieval fortress of Lyutitsa you had to cross a number of checkpoints and run the risk of being arrested at any moment,” remembers Irko Petrov, director of the regional archaeology museum.  

Russian scientists have uncovered the remains of the child Emperor Ivan VI, who was overthrown after 404 days and sent into exile. He died at the age of 24 during an escape attempt.  

Two huge water reservoirs have been discovered at the Maya city of Uxul in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. “We conducted a trial dig in the center of one of the water reservoirs. We found that the bottom, which is at a depth of two meters, was covered with ceramic shards – probably from plates – practically without any gaps. But we don’t know yet whether it’s like this throughout the entire aguada,” explained student Nicolaus Seefeld. 

BP’s plans to sink an oil well off the coast of Libya could put the country’s archaeological sites and shipwrecks at risk. “They are very important sites and they are very fragile. If there is a problem with oil, like in the US, and it washes on to the shore it’s going to be very difficult to clean the remains because the stones are porous,” explained Claude Sintes, director of the Museum of Ancient Arles in France and director of the sub-aquatic team of the French archaeological mission to Libya.  

Anthropologist Pat Shipman of Penn State University thinks that the ability to observe, control, hunt, and eat other animals may have driven human evolution. “Domestication was reciprocal,” she writes in Current Anthropology.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Monday, September 13, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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