In southern Utah, archaeologists have finished excavating the North Creek Shelter Site, which was inhabited periodically beginning 11,000-years ago until about 100 years ago. “We were totally surprised by what we found,” said Joel Janetski, now retired from Brigham Young University.

In Tennessee, human remains turned up when a homeowner dug a trench as part of flood repairs. The bones are thought to be between 500 and 1,000 years old. “They’ve basically been put on notice that there’s a cemetery in their yard,” said state archaeologist Mike Moore.  

Steven Smith of the University of South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology will identify and evaluate the condition of battlefields and camps associated with General Sherman’s march through South Carolina during the Civil War. He will also look for two prisoner of war camps. “Most of the work at this level is information gathering,” he explained.  

It turns out that Ohio’s Indian Mound Park is just named after American Indian burial mounds, but doesn’t actually contain any of them. Contract archaeologist Ryan Weller determined that the park’s mounds are natural formations.  

Here’s a bit more information on the recovery of a box thought to hold records related to the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. 

Cuneiform tablets describing a trade deal hashed out 4,000 years ago have been found in Turkey at Kultepe-Karum.   

A late Roman cemetery has been unearthed in Kent, England, outside what had been the Roman town of Durolevum. Roman settlement of the area could date to the invasion in 43 A.D.  

The hobbit wars are heating up again. Robert Eckhardt of Penn State University and Maciej Henneberg of the University of Adelaide argue that the specimen discovered in Liang Bua Cave on the Indonesian island of Flores had a tiny brain and asymmetrical skull because of abnormal development.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Wednesday, September 8, 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.