Archaeology Magazine Archive

A publication of the Archaeological Institute of America

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Archaeology Magazine News Archive
2008-2012


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Friday, August 26
August 26, 2011

A small stone shelter built 8,000 years ago has been found beneath ten feet of earth in Colorado. “It was a place where smaller task groups, just a small segment of the population would go and stay for a few days or a week,” said James Miller of the Dominguez Anthropological Research Group.

Archaeologist Julie Roy spotted a World War II-era dog tag while surveying a patch of what used to be the Desert Training Center in southern California. The tags were recently returned to the family of Pvt. Ova Napier. Six other dog tags have also been recovered.

Are you looking for a new hobby? Perhaps flintknapping is for you!

A new hairdo was part of the Egyptian embalming process. “The whole point of mummification was to preserve the body as in life. I guess they wanted to look their best,” said Natalie McCreesh of the University of Manchester.

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Thursday, August 25
August 25, 2011

A Roman amphitheater has been found in northern England by a Cambridge University archaeologist who grew up hearing about the lost structure from her grandfather. “It was under our noses. I used to come here as a girl with my friends because the slope and terracing made it Aldborough’s sledging hill,” said Rose Ferraby. The area was probably busier and more prosperous than previously thought.

There’s evidence of a planned town near Silchester in southern England. “They did this all before the Romans had arrived,” said Mike Fulford of the University of Reading.

Do you have any ideas about how the Romans might have used this hole-covered jar?

Scroll down to reach the discussion of the first permanent villages in Western Canada in this report from Voice of America News. At a village site on Galiano Island, the Coast Salish people built large structures some 1,500 years ago, fished, hunted, and collected plants and shellfish.

A summer kitchen has been excavated at Dill’s Tavern in York, Pennsylvania. “This building would not have been standing long – the ground tells us it was built in the late eighteenth century. But it was likely torn down by 1819 because the 1819 addition to the tavern building sits about a foot from where these ruins were found,” said Steve Warfel of the State Museum of Pennsylvania.

The sunflower was domesticated once, in the eastern United States, according to genetic evidence gathered by Benjamin Blackman of Indiana University. “Although current archaeological finds indicate that ancient Mesoamericans cultivated sunflower before Spanish colonists arrived in the New World, more discoveries are needed to understand where and how quickly sunflower crop development spread in Mesoamerica and eastern North America,” he explained.

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