In Argentina, two brothers were digging in their backyard in order to build an addition on their house when they unearthed a 1,300-year-old pot. After three more pots turned up, they called in some archaeologists, who found four more.

Subway excavation in Mexico City has revealed the remains of Aztec adults and children, the foundations of homes, and hundreds of artifacts.  

Victims of disease during the siege of York in 1644 have been unearthed just outside the city’s walls. The ten mass graves held a total of 113 skeletons of Oliver Cromwell’s under-supplied supporters.  

Reports from China indicate that 5,000 stone figurines between 2,000 and 5,000 years old have been found at Guizai Mountain, located in Hunan Province. The figurines may have been left at the sacred mountain as religious offerings.  

A tenth ship that may have been scuttled by the British at the end of the Revolutionary War may be sitting at the bottom of the York River. Underwater archaeologists John D. Broadwater and Gordon Watts have been looking for the remains of the British fleet as part of the Department of Historic Resources’ Threatened Sites Program. “We knew divers were down here looting every weekend,” said Broadwater.  

Officials from Georgia’s Magnolia Springs State Park have already stopped a half-dozen relic hunters from digging at Camp Lawton. They were released with a warning, but violators may be prosecuted in the future. “This site is unusually undisturbed. For Civil War sites, this is an amazing thing,” said Rick Kanaski, regional archaeologist and historic preservation officer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  

Underwater archaeologists have returned to Florida’s Little Salt Spring, where 10,000-year-old artifacts have been found 90 feet below the surface. “The anoxic (absence of oxygen) environment at the bottom of the spring does not allow microbes and bacteria to live, so decomposition of organic material deposited there thousands of years ago is greatly reduced. Wooden and other organic tools, as well as animals’ soft tissues and bones, are preserved nearly intact in this unique environment,” explained John Gifford of the University of Miami.  

In Washington State, some kids looking for shells and rocks as part of their day camp projects discovered 18 pieces of hand-made hardware that may have come from an early twentieth-century lumber mill.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, August 19, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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