Julia King of Maryland’s St. Mary’s College says she has located Zekiah Fort, built by Governor Charles Calvert, the third Lord Baltimore, in 1680. The fort was intended to protect Maryland Indian groups from raiders from the north.

Bridge construction in London has uncovered the remains of a Roman bath house. “In Roman times the main settlement was on the north bank of the River Thames and was connected to the settlement at Southwark by the first London Bridge,” said Chris Place of Network Rail.

In Ireland, structures built after 1700 could be removed from the protection of the Record of Monuments and Places. “It’s the archaeology of our immediate ancestors, of the diaspora. It’s still relevant. Once the protection goes, there’s nothing to stop people coming in and bulldozing the sites, or using them for development,” said archaeologist Colm Moriarty.

Archaeologists and volunteers will spend four days excavating a fort in Stirling, Scotland, that was destroyed by fire in 780 A.D. “Scotland has more known vitrified forts than anywhere else in Europe and here in Stirling we have our own that reflects our warlike past,” said Stirling Council archaeologist Murray Cook.

Bones unearthed in a cemetery in Red Bay, Labrador, belonged to Basques who whaled offshore and lived along the coast more than 400 years ago. Basque whaling vessels have also been found.

A new analysis of a 13,000-year-old skull discovered in a cave in West Africa in 1965 concludes that the ancestors of early humans could have lived on for much longer than previously thought. “[The skull] has got a much more primitive appearance, even though it is only 13,000 years old. This suggests that human evolution in Africa was more complex… the transition to modern humans was not a straight transition and then a cut off,” explained Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts will return a 2,500-year-old vase to Italy. The vase most likely was looted from a Greek settlement in the Puglia region of southern Italy before it was sold to the museum in 1983.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, September 16, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

Comments posted here do not represent the views or policies of the Archaeological Institute of America.