The stylized engravings on stones made by the Iron Age Picts in Scotland were analyzed with a mathematical process, and have been shown to be part of a written language. “It is more than plausible that the Pictish symbols are examples of a script, in the sense that they encoded some information, which also had a spoken form,” agreed Paul Bouissac of the University of Toronto. He was not involved in the study. 

The first tree ring chronology for Asia shows that the Khmer Empire capital of Angkor was subjected to decades of drought followed by intense monsoons that may have damaged the city’s canal system. 

Police in Peru recovered Paracas, Chavin, and Moche artifacts, in addition to the mummy of an Inca child, from two homes in the Cusco region. The objects would have been sold on the black market. 

PeruRail is offering limited train service to Machu Picchu, which will reportedly reopen on Thursday. The rails had been wiped out during flooding and landslides in January. 

Archaeologists have started to dig at Shakespeare’s home in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. 

Results of the forensic canine examination of the Port Angeles waterfront in Washington State are in—and the dogs only found seven percent of the shoreline interesting. “I think it is good, and hopefully it relieves a lot of the surrounding areas about the potential [for development] out there in that aspect,” said Frances Charles, Lower Elwha Klallam Tribal Chairwoman. Construction of a bridge in the area had to be halted when an American Indian village, called Tse-whit-zen, and burial site were discovered.  

The last surviving population of woolly mammoths, which lived on Russia’s Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago, was wiped out quickly, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The first archaeological evidence of human occupation of the island appears after the death of the mammoths, so a storm or new disease could have been to blame for their demise.  

A 400-year-old shipwreck near North Carolina’s Currituck Beach Lighthouse is being damaged by surf and storms. Local volunteers and state engineers plan to salvage what is left.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, March 31, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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