The mummies of a woman and three children from the Huari culture have been discovered in Lima, Peru, in an intact tomb at the top of a pyramid. The tomb is estimated to be 1,150 years old.  

At Peru’s 1,400-year-old Moche site of Huaca Colorada, elites lived on the flat-topped pyramids, where they probably presided over rituals, worked copper, and feasted. “There’s a far more robust domestic occupation than what we would have expected,” said John Warner of the University of Kentucky.  

Scientists at the Smithsonian Institution have found no evidence that an etched bone from Florida is a forgery. The artifact, which is estimated to be 13,000 years old, bears an image of a walking mammoth. “I want to auction it to the person with the most money,” said collector James Kennedy.  

The project to reinvent and revive Egypt’s city of Luxor is in full swing: the tourist infrastructure is expanding, tombs have been restored, and the ancient “Avenue of the Sphinxes” is being uncovered. However, locals complain that they have been sent to live in the desert, while archaeologists are concerned that the attempt to recreate pharaonic-era Luxor may actually harm undiscovered archaeological sites.  

Turkey’s environment minister defended two controversial dam projects this week, saying that without the dams, “we cannot prevent floods, and cannot provide drinking water and energy for cities. We cannot combat soil erosion.” The ancient city of Allianoi is due to be flooded by the Yortanli Dam in western Turkey, and in the southeast, the city of Hasankeyf will be flooded by the Ilisu Dam.  

A tell-tale pipe bowl indicates that archaeologists have found the nineteenth-century cabin belonging to pioneer photographer Peter Britt. “We found a lot of elk and deer bones – wild game bones. In the early 1850s, there wouldn’t have been much development,” said Chelsea Rose of Southern Oregon University.  

Hunter-gatherers began agricultural settlements on the island of Cyprus 500 years earlier than previously believed, according to an article published in Antiquity. “We found this site by doing the opposite of the normal strategy – people had been looking around the coast. The coast around 11,000 years ago basically is now 50 to a couple hundred meters offshore from the present coastline, because sea level has risen. We said we should go inland, and look at the type of place that a hunter-gatherer on the island might try to be a hunter-gatherer or an incipient agriculturalist,” explained Sturt Manning of Cornell University.  

Archaeologist Ramon Fernandez offers an introduction to the tenth-century palace city of Madinat Al Zahra, located outside the city of Cordoba in southern Spain.  

Here’s a photograph of the 5,000-year-old door uncovered in Zurich.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, October 21, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.