Researchers from the University of Barcelona have identified the pigment known as Egyptian blue on a decorated altar piece in a twelfth-century church. The pigment was used by the ancient Egyptians and the Romans, but was no longer made after the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 A.D. Because the church was built upon the remains of a Roman settlement in Barcelona, the scientists think the medieval artists may have found the prepared blue pigment in the ground.

Here’s a photograph of the 2,000-year-old Ptolemaic statue unearthed in Egypt. “The well-preserved statue may be among the most beautiful carvings in the ancient Egyptian style,” said archaeology chief Zahi Hawass.  Check out what else is happening at the Temple of Taposiris Magna on Dr. Hawass’s web page.  

Australia’s Western Desert lands that are burned by Aboriginal hunters are more biologically diverse than land untouched by humans. “What happens when you break all of these co-evolutionary links between people who’ve lived on the landscape for thousands of years and the diversity of the faunal and floral community?” ask Douglas and Rebecca Bird of Stanford University.  

A skeleton that disappeared from a quarry in Ireland’s County Donegal has been returned by a man who has reportedly been gathering artifacts from the area for years. He said he was concerned that other people would damage the bones.  

Archaeologists and the Cirebon Kasepuhan Sultanate are protesting the sale of artifacts from a 1,000-year-old shipwreck discovered off the coast of West Java. The sale is being conducted by the Indonesian government’s National Committee for the Recovery of Sunken Treasure Ships, which would receive half of the proceeds. No one actually registered for the first scheduled auction of the artifacts, held earlier this week.  

Here’s more information on the pressurized water feature discovered at the Maya city of Palenque. “The experience the Maya at Palenque had in constructing aqueducts for diversion of water and preservation of urban space may have led to the creation of useful water pressure,” said Kirk French of Penn State University.  

Three-thousand-year-old artifacts have been found on Morven Farm, at the University of Virginia. The archaeological survey was commissioned when historical documents suggested that American Indians had once settled on the land, which was occupied by tenant farmers in the eighteenth century.  

In 2008, a judge ruled that the mummified body of a baby kept as a family heirloom for nearly a century must be buried in a New Hampshire cemetery. Earlier this week, a visitor to the cemetery reported that an unmarked grave at the cemetery had been disturbed, and after an investigation, the authorities revealed that the mummy’s casket was empty. “It wasn’t that well known where the exact location was,” said police Sgt. John Thomas.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, May 5, 2010. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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