A stone wall uncovered at the entrance to a cave in Thessaly, Greece, is being called the oldest in the world. “The dating matches the coldest period of the most recent ice age, indicating that the cavern’s Paleolithic inhabitants built it to protect themselves from the cold,” read a statement from the Greek ministry of culture. 

Marvin Rowe of Texas A&M University in Qatar and his team of scientists say they have developed a new method to test ancient objects without damaging them. “This technique stands to revolutionize radiocarbon dating,” he said.  

Early humans who were coordinated and rhythmic may have had an evolutionary advantage. Good dancers are predisposed to being good social communicators with higher levels of feel-good brain chemicals, and early human dancers may have had an advantage when it came time to attract a mate.   

Archaeologist Kathleen Kirk Gilmore has died at the age of 95 in Dallas, Texas. She is best known for her discovery of the fort built by French explorer LaSalle beneath a Spanish fort on the Gulf Coast. “They had to go under the Spanish artifacts in order to find the French [history]. Mother knew where it was, but she couldn’t prove it until they excavated with the Texas Historical Commission,” said her daughter, Pat Gilmore.  

And, there’s more on the discovery of an eighteenth-century French fort in Vermont.  

Water damage from irrigation canals threatens the ruins of ancient Babylon, and a team is being assembled to combat the long-standing problem. “This is without doubt the most complex program we’ve ever had to organize,” said Bonnie Burnham, president of the World Monuments Fund.  

A team of Indian and English researchers is studying the origins of high carbon steel-making in southern India. “We are examining and recording sites where iron has been smelted from local ores. This means visiting rural villages and exploring forest areas to identify heaps of slag waste left by these processes,” said Gill Juleff of the University of Exeter.   

The Staffordshire Hoard, a collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver artifacts discovered by a man with a metal detector, will remain in England’s Midlands, thanks to a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. Museums in Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent will share the objects. “Frankly they’d have been demented not to give the money,” said historian David Starkey, who led a fund-raising appeal. Most of the money needed had been raised by members of the public.    Archaeologists will return to the site where the Staffordshire hoard was unearthed. “We are trying to find features which could tell us what the landscape was like when the hoard was buried,” said Stephen Dean, chief archaeologist for Stoke-on-Trent City Council.   

Mummies unearthed in Vietnam have unique qualities.  

Did the queen of Denmark really climb a fence and dig up clay pipes in London’s Hyde Park in the 1960s?

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, March 23, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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