Archaeologists have uncovered a 340-year-old Chinese coin in northwestern Canada. “The coin adds to the body of evidence that the Chinese market connected with Yukon First Nations through Russian and coastal Tlingit trade intermediaries during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and perhaps as early as the fifteenth century,” read a statement released by the archaeological firm Ecofor Consulting, Ltd. The coin is only the third to have been discovered in the region.

Recent heavy rains damaged several of the pagodas in the ancient city of Bagan in Myanmar.

Edeltraud Aspöck of the Austrian Academy of Sciences thinks that people may have opened graves during the Middle Ages for reasons other than robbery. “Some researchers say in early medieval periods the cemetery may have been a place to play power games, to display the dead with very rich grave goods. It may have been an important factor when families or clans are competing with each other,” she said.

Construction work in eastern England unearthed two Bronze Age pins and four torques. An Iron Age ring ditch was also found at the site.

Genetic traces of the Denisovans can be found in modern East Asians, according to a new genetic study using computer simulations that was led by Mattias Jakobsson of Uppsala Univeristy. “We found that individuals from mainly Southeast Asia have a higher proportion of Denisova-related genetic variants than people from other parts of the world, such as Europe, America, West and Central Asia, and Africa,” he said.

A development project in Greenwich, England, revealed bone-handled toothbrushes, thimbles, coins, bottles, and a nineteenth-century ceramic jug decorated with an image from the story of Robinson Crusoe.

University of Hawai’i archaeologists are investigating the Honouliuli Camp, where more than 3,000 prisoners of war and American citizens of various ethnic backgrounds were held during World War II. “What little has been known resulted in Honouliuli being thought of primarily as a World War II Japanese internment site. Our summer research emphasizes the diversity of those interned and imprisoned in Hawai’i,” said Suzanne Falgout of the the West O’ahu campus.

The Art Newspaper has more information on the theft of antiquities from a Libyan bank last spring.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Tuesday, November 1, 2011. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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