There has been a fire in a barracks building at the former Nazi death camp of Majdanek, located in eastern Poland. Some 10,000 shoes belonging to Holocaust victims had been stored there. “The damage to these irreplaceable items is a loss to a site that has such historical value to Europe, Poland, and the Jewish people,” said Avner Shalev, director of the Yad Vashem Museum in Israel. The fire is thought to have started at a camp kitchen in the building.

Students learning to use geophysical equipment at the Roman fortress of Caerleon in south Wales discovered several large buildings that may have been baths, markets, administrative buildings, or temples. “Caerleon is one of the best known Roman sites in Britain, so it was a great surprise to realize that we had found something completely new and totally unexpected,” said Peter Guest of Cardiff University.  

The bones of newly dead adults at Teotihuacan were often sculpted into tools, according to the analysis of 5,000 bone fragments by scientists from the National Autonomous University of Mexico.  

Police recovered 380 artifacts and arrested five people living in Sofia and Vratsa, Bulgaria, for treasure hunting after searching their homes.  

Students from the University of Tennessee searched for signs of Indian Camp, which was home to enslaved African Americans in the eighteenth century. “Chances are it’s out there, it’s just a question of finding the spot,” said their professor, Barbara Heath.  

“Thunderstones” are back in the news. Archaeologists think the Vikings believed Stone Age ax heads and bits of prehistoric flint resembled Thor’s hammerhead and could act as “lightning repellent” or offer other protection. Such thunderstones have been found in graves in Scandinavia and Iceland, where flint does not occur naturally. “It shows that these stones had very special significance and suggests that these people were highly superstitious,” said Olle Hemdorff of the University of Stavanger.  

A mathematical study of stones carved by the Picts has suggested that the images could be symbolic and meant to convey information. But linguists are not sure if the mathematical method is valid. “The line between writing and drawing is not as clear cut as categorized in the paper,” concludes French scholar Arnaud Fournet.  

A wooden tablet dated bearing the date 730 A.D. has been found in Japan, at the site of what is thought to have been a foundry for the country’s first currency. Coins, molds, and other tools have also been uncovered.  

An Idaho woman was sentenced to three years federal probation for digging at an archaeological site in the Salmon-Challis National Forest. She will also have to pay restitution.  

Vulcanologist Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo thinks that high temperatures, and not suffocation by ash and gas, killed the residents of Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted.  

There’s a bit more information about the artifacts unearthed at the Star Carr site in northeastern England, home to what archaeologists are calling the oldest house in Britain.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, August 11, 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.