A fifth-century shipwreck has been discovered in a Byzantine harbor uncovered by the Istanbul subway dig. “This is the largest cargo ship yet to be uncovered. There is no other example in the world of a shipwreck where the timber of the ship, as well as its load, are in such good condition. If the wreck had been at sea, it would not have been this well preserved,” said archaeologist Mehmet Ali Polat.

A Thracian tomb containing six leaves of a gold wreath and bronze figures was discovered in northeastern Bulgaria.  Here’s a photograph of one of the artifacts from the tomb.

A second solar boat buried on the southern side of Khufu’s Great Pyramid was removed from its limestone chamber today and taken to a warehouse, where it will be reassembled. The boat was discovered in 1954. There are more photographs at the Washington Post.

The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley could reach an upright position today for the first time since it sank in 1864. “This is the culmination of a lot of work by a whole lot of people,” said former Friends of the Hunley chairman Warren Lasch.

Five bottles of wine have been recovered from the Mary-Celestia on the south shore of Bermuda. The ship, a Civil War blockade runner, also sank in 1864.

In England’s Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, conservators are carefully cleaning the 3,500 pieces of the 1,300-year-old Staffordshire Hoard. “We are working with hawthorn needles, or blackthorn or polyanthus, held in a pin vice to remove the soil,” said Deborah Cane, manager of the project. Be sure to watch her talk about the project on the video.

Seventeen skeletons found in a well in Norwich, England, may well be evidence of persecution of Jewish people in the Middle Ages. DNA sequencing suggests that the individuals were members of a single Jewish family. “I am not aware that this has been done before—that we have been able to pin them down to this level of specificity of the ethnic group that they seem to come from,” said DNA expert Ian Barnes.

The Acadians were expelled from Nova Scotia by the English in 1755. A team from Saint Mary’s University has found evidence that English immigrants from Connecticut then built their homes on Acadian stone foundations.

More human bones have been uncovered at the SE Pioneer Way Improvement Project in Washington State.

Utahns respond to the layoff of their state archaeologists. “You have to have somebody who can speak up on behalf of all of us,” said David Madsen, Utah’s former state archaeologist.

Additional artifacts from Machu Picchu returned to Peru today after spending more than 100 years at Yale University.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, June 23, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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