Rock art depicting a celebration from Egypt’s earliest dynasty has been found along the banks of the Nile River in Aswan.

A stone gate has been unearthed at the temple of Karnak in Luxor. Built by Nubian King Shabaka, the 2,700-year-old gate led to a room containing his treasures.

While examining the bones and decapitated heads discovered in a mass burial pit in Dorset, England, archaeologists found a pair of front teeth that had been filed with grooves. “It’s difficult to say how painful the process of filing teeth may have been, but it wouldn’t have been a pleasant experience,” said David Score, manager of the project. The executed men are thought to have been Viking warriors.

In Bulgaria, archaeologist Ivan Hristov found a ceremonial double-headed ax near at the fortified home of the rulers from the Odrysian tribe.

A thirteenth-century pot decorated with a ram’s head was unearthed at a manor house in Wales. “We’ve always known about the manorial estate but the amount of highly decorative pottery we’ve found including French tableware shows we’re looking at a high status family, more wealthy than we’d realized,” said Alice Forward of Cardiff University.

The search for traces of human habitation in North Carolina’s Great Dismal Swamp continues. The swamp was a safe haven for thousands of people who escaped slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War. “Thousands of people lived here, and for the most part, those lives went unrecorded,” said Dan Sayers of American University.

Two archaeologists in Oregon invested in a commercial building, only to find that the back parking lot was built upon a trash pit once used by Chinese immigrants.

Peru is seeking the return of hundreds of Paracas textiles held at Sweden’s Gothenburg World Culture Museum.

The discovery of a skull in a residential garden in London has led to the closing of a 130-year-old murder case.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, July 5, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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