Alejandro Terrazas of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology has reconstructed the face of a woman who lived on the Caribbean coast between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. He says she resembles people from southeastern Asia. “This indicates that the Americas were populated by several migratory movements, not just one or two waves from northern Asia across the Bering Strait,” he claims.

A new expedition will create a 3D map of the RMS Titanic. “For the first time, we’re really going to treat it as an archaeological site with two things in mind. One is to preserve the legacy of the ship by enhancing the story of the Titanic itself. The second part is to really understand what the state of the ship is,” said David Gallo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.  

Archaeologist Nick Luccketti talks about keeping a contract archaeology firm afloat during a recession. 

Students are assisting with the investigation of Whitehall House in Middletown, Rhode Island, one-time home to eighteenth-century philosopher George Berkeley. The building was also a tavern, a tea house, housing for British soldiers, and a tenant farm. “Whitehall is one of those iconic Rhode Island houses that we should know more about, but don’t,” said James C. Garman of Salve Regina University.  

Here’s an update with photographs on the eighteenth-century ship unearthed at the World Trade Center site. “It’s lovely to look at, but we’ll get much more information by taking it apart,” said contract archaeologist Diane Dallal.  

Two fragments of clay tablet unearthed at the site of Hazor in northern Israel are said to be inscribed in cuneiform with a 3,700-year-old code of law. The excavations are being conducted by archaeologists from Hebrew University.  

Chinese archaeologists will reportedly search for a ship that sank off the coast of Kenya 600 years ago. Scholars think the ship will provide information about early contact between Ming Dynasty China and East Africa, and the legendary explorer Zheng He.  

How did hands and tool making interact to make us human? “Everything that made us human was arguably given this big push by using stone tools, and so I’m trying to see what it is about our anatomy that allowed us to be good at it compared to other species that weren’t good at it,” said Erin Marie Williams of George Washington University.  

Three antiques dealers and a professor have been arrested in South Korea for dealing in stolen cultural artifacts.  

There’s more information on the Temple University excavation of an African-American town in central New Jersey, known in the early nineteenth century as Timbuctoo. “These people had to deal with Jim Crow, they had to deal with slavery, they had to deal with economic oppression, racism. That’s what we’re really trying to find,” explained archaeologist Chris Barton.  

Four archaeological sites are being excavated in the Rhodope Mountains, near the Greek-Bulgarian border. “It is too early to speak about great finds but I think that these are sites are very promising,” said archaeologist Georgi Nehrizov. The area is slated for the construction of a new road.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, July 27, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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