A Civil War blockade runner called the Modern Greece sank off the coast of North Carolina 150 years ago. It is best known for its role in the passing of a state law to protect historic shipwreck sites, and some of its many artifacts have been used by scientists to test methods of preservation. A portion of those artifacts have been sitting in storage tanks since 1962. Now students and interns from East Carolina University and UNC Wilmington will clean, catalog, and begin modern preservation treatments on those objects.

Human remains thought to predate the construction of York Minster have been uncovered within the church by archaeologists. The building was constructed over a 250-year period between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries.

There are plans to build a replica of Angkor Wat, a twelfth-century Hindu temple located in Cambodia, by a religious group in Bihar, India. The Cambodian original has been a World Heritage site since 1992. “We won’t let anyone confuse the world that there are two Angkor Wats,” said Phay Siphan, a Cambodian government spokesman.

A team made up of students and staff from Colorado Mesa University and the Museum of Western Colorado claim to have found fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Spanish artifacts in western Colorado. “I think it might rewrite our history books a little bit and I think it’s really interesting that they would be this far north. But they were in pursuit of silver and gold mines and always looking for treasure and riches,” said David Bailey, director of the project.

On an island off the coast of southwest Africa, archaeologists from the University of Bristol have uncovered some 300 burials in a cemetery where as many as 5,000 people may have buried between 1840 and 1872, when the British Royal Navy policed the seas, captured slave ships, and brought the captives to the island. “Here we have the victims of the Middle Passage – one of the greatest crimes against humanity – not just as numbers, but as human beings,” said team member Mark Horton.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Thursday, March 8, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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